The Saiyan Shinobi
by iLarryyy
Summary: Kudo is a 14 year old Genin from the Hidden Soul village, a remote island sanctuary, far out at sea. 14 years ago, he was found in a crashed vessel and was adopted by the Hidden Soul's most powerful shinobi. With the Konoha Chunin Exams approaching, what are the consequences of a Saiyan wandering the Narutoverse? (Genjutsu can affect non-chakra users) (Saiyan powers suppressed)
1. Chapter 1 - Ready for Anything

**Hey guys, this is my first fanfic EVER! I've had this idea for a long time and I just felt that I needed to get it written down somewhere. Since it's my first ever, some constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated, but don't be too harsh! Have fun :) -(Don't forget to Favorite and review!)-**

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 _(Set in Naruto Part 1, just before the Chunin exams)_

 _The story starts in a small bedroom with a view of the sea and a large forest. It is early in the morning, and birds can be heard in the trees. The yearly Chunin Exams are to be held the next day in the village Hidden in The Leaves, better known as Konoha._

He woke.

It was time.

The "He" in question was a 14 year old genin from the distant Hidden Soul Village, a small and rather peaceful community situated on an island to the south-east of the Water Nation.

The kid's name was Kudo Takibi. An awkward, not-quite-sure-of-himself teenager who you'd think had a lot to say but never said it. So it follows that his name was rather inappropriate; "Kudo" means "verbosity", or "talkativeness."

He had slightly tanned skin, strangely jet-black and spiky hair which almost 'protruded' from his head and hung stiffly about his face, and eyes that were sharp and darker than Sasuke's life story. He was average in height and his muscles were well-defined… in fact, everything about his figure was somehow, _too_ defined, almost…  
inhuman, in fact.

Not as inhuman as his thick, furry brown tail though.

You see, Kudo was not your average guy. He didn't have 'parents', as such. Rather, he was…  
found.

* * *

 _ **-14 years beforehand-**_ :

An experienced shinobi named Ikidori Takibi, a loyal guardian of the Hidden Soul village had been out on a mission to assassinate a duo of skilled bandits who had been killing and looting travelers, not too far from the village. When he had arrived at the location of their camp, they were nowhere to be seen.  
In the place of their tent lay a large, white and crumpled metal ball with a reddish, transparent glass pane.

The bottom of it was bathed in splattered blood; this 'thing' had done Ikidori's job for him.  
Not wasting anymore time, Ikidori turned and leaped away when suddenly a loud cry broke out, seemingly from the 'object'.

Ikidori cautiously approached, raised his chakra steadily (just in case) and looked through the pane of red glass. Inside lay a tiny baby with spiky black hair, bawling his eyes out. Ikidori was puzzled. Why was this child in here? Where could he have come from? Ikidori assumed that the object had fallen from the sky; someone had dropped it on the bandits and had beaten him to it.

The baby had been strapped down with leather and had what looked like drips and heart monitors hooked up to it. Ikidori wrenched open the front hatch.  
He noticed a large gash on the side of its head, and so he reached around it and gently placed his fingers on the wound to heal it. Immediately, the baby screamed and writhed under his touch. It shook its small arms and legs until the leather straps that held it down ripped.

Ikidori was taken aback.

Protruding from the baby's lower back was a thick, brown tail, which moved around as though it had a life of its own.

He quickly grabbed the child, hoping to bring it back to the village so that someone more experienced with healing (and handling babies) could look after it. He couldn't just leave it there.  
As he leaped through the trees on the way back, the baby struggled still. It was almost… strong, too strong for something so fragile and young. Ikidori powered through the forest at full speed, both worrying for the tailed child and being eager for someone to take it off his hands.

Kudo was not aware of any of this, nor were the other inhabitants of the village; they were never told.

* * *

- _ **Back to the present**_ -:

Kudo flopped lazily onto his hands and knees. He yawned loudly and stood up, and ran his hand through his thick black hair. Strangely enough, Kudo had never had a haircut, which was odd for one of the members of the Takibi clan, all of whom had long, flowing hair which had to be cut regularly due to the rate at which it grew.

Kudo's hair never grew.

In fact, it never changed at all.

He was not very self-conscious, so he wasted no time getting washed and dressed. This was probably down to the fact that no matter how hard he tried, he would always look the same.  
He slipped on his red-and-black shinobi jacket and his black pants, strapped his Hidden Soul headband to his forehead, wrapped his tail around his waist and pulled his belt up over it.

"Kudo!"

The shout came from downstairs.

"Get down here right now, or we'll miss the ship and you'll never become a chunin. Do you really want that? I-"

"Spare me the lecture, Dad!" Kudo shouted back.

He grabbed his pre-packed bag and hurried downstairs for breakfast. On one side of the breakfast table, there were two bowls of cereal, one of them nearly empty, and on the other, an absolutely huge platter of various small cakes and a full bucket of milk. Kudo, sat quickly down in front of the cakes and the milk, and within 2 minutes, all of it was gone.  
All of it.  
Kudo had always had a large appetite (which in itself is a huge understatement), as far as Ikidori and Heian Takibi could remember.

"Kudo, have you made sure you've packed everything?" his mother said knowingly.

"Of course," he replied dismissively,"Believe me, if I had missed something I would have known about it."

"Just checking."

His father had already stepped outside into the sun. Ikidori was a tall and handsome man with piercing green eyes and long, flowing brown hair. His neck was covered with scars from his many skirmishes with criminals and assassins as a village guardian, and although he had chiseled features and defined muscles, he bore no resemblance to his son, who was unaware of his own adoption.

"Get out here, boy" he said through the open door,"We're going now. Say goodbye to your mother."

"Bye, mom."

"Farewell, son. You do your best out there, OK?"

"Sure. I've got this."

Kudo stepped out into the morning light, bag in hand, and strolled towards his father.

He was ready for just about anything.

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 **That's all for now (yes, I know it was short), but if it proves to be successful then I'll continue. NarutoxDBZ crossovers have a lot of potential for good storytelling so I'm hoping I can pull through. I think it will be interesting to see how the chunin exams play out in this one! Thanks! Favorite this and tell me if you want to see more!**

 **-( Had to include that saiyan eating scene ;) )-**


	2. Chapter 2 - Arrival

**Hey again and welcome to the second chapter of my first ever fanfic! From now on we are going to be seeing a lot of the series' characters and even pairings!**

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 _Kudo has taken a ship from the Hidden Soul village island to the southernmost part of the Fire Nation, and 1 day later he arrives with his father, Ikidori. While they journey through the woods in order to get to the Hidden Leaf, they encounter some trouble on the way._

Kudo had been leaping to a branch in the next tree when it happened.

A double-edged kunai crossed his acute vision and sailed past his nose, missing by only a hair.

"Shit!" he cried. "Dad! We're under attack!"

Ikidori wasted no time. He leaped towards his son and tackled him to the floor just as a stream of shurikens zipped past the branch he was perched on. Ikidori got up instantly, put his hands to his belt and was gone in a flash to hunt the attackers down.  
Kudo was more sluggish.  
A shinobi has many weapons, one of which is his chakra, a force within his body which allows him to manipulate the elements and emit destructive or creative forces of limitless magnitude.  
That was the problem.

Kudo was a genin, a trained but inexperienced ninja, but trained none the less...

And yet he had _no chakra.  
 **None at all**._

Ever since he was 5 years old, his father had told him that he held unimaginable power. Spiritual power, that somehow, he had attained without inheriting chakra.  
His father could never sense Kudo's presence due to this, and this was also what made Kudo such a successful shinobi.  
He was, in effect, undetectable, but he could still perform many of the feats that the other shinobi required chakra to do.

Kudo now stood upright, with right arm raised.  
In his palm, a bright yellow sphere of solid light began to form.  
Suddenly, a masked figure leapt out of the trees towards him, brandishing a small but sharp-looking axe.

Kudo swung his light-filled hand toward his assailant and the ball of yellow energy crashed violently on his chest.  
Kudo then fired a huge follow-up shot, exploding the masked figure's arm and causing him to scream in pain.

He was suddenly alerted to many approaching feet; and he could hear the clanging of kunais against belts.

He then pulled his arms in towards his body as they charged at him, raised his head and let out a powerful shout.  
Yellow light bursted from his core, tearing away trees and knocking the masked men backwards instantly. Instead of them vaporizing, though, he heard a cacaphony of popping sounds, and one by one the men disappeared in a small cloud of smoke.

"They were clones! Then where's the real one?" Kudo said quietly to himself.

"Right here!" came the rasping reply as a spiky arm wrapped around Kudo's throat.

The arm squeezed ever tighter, but Kudo was unfazed. He brought the arm off his neck and then snapped it clean down the middle at the elbow, and a shrill scream ensued. As he turned to finish his attacker off, he felt something fly past him...  
a golden shuriken belonging to his father.  
It landed clean in the middle of the man's mask with a thud and he fell to his knees, collapsing into a heap.

"You seem to be up to scratch, Kudo. I'll have to inform the Konoha authorities about this, they can't have bandits running around when the number of travelling visitors is at its peak."

"Thanks, Dad. But to be honest, you kind of stole my glory there."

"There is no glory to be had in taking out the trash such as this. Just remember that. You'll be facing some tough opponents today so don't let it get to your head."

Kudo sighed. As much as he loved his Dad, he was always a _bit_ too serious. Kudo didn't think his Dad realised that what he needed right now was some encouragement and not mini-lectures on the importance of humility.

 _After some more cautious travelling, Kudo arrives at the village gates with his father._

Kudo looked up.

He felt very nervous, but he wasn't quite sure why.

The huge gates of the village were opening slowly before he and his father, and as they did, the sun was peeking through the clouds on the other side. When the gates finally opened, Kudo gazed in awe.

On the mountain ahead were huge sculpted heads, set into the stone, their faces looking heroic and pensive.

This was all new to him. People were walking in the streets, talking, singing, laughing, playing, working and living their own lives, much unlike in the Hidden Soul, where very few stepped outside unless they needed to buy food or visit people elsewhere. He could see shops and clothes stores, restaurants and much more.

"Kudo? Snap out of it son." His father said forcefully.

"Oh? Sorry Dad, it's just… so… lively. I've never seen anything like it before." Kudo replied, still half-mesmerised by this new environment.

"Yes, I think I should have told you before we got here. That would have eased the shock. Go on now. Why don't you have a look around?" Ikidori stepped towards the gatekeepers' kiosk to show his I.D.

Kudo stepped fowards gingerly, feeling awkward with his hands in his pockets. No sooner had he taken 5 steps forwards than he was knocked back onto the floor by a sprinting boy with spiky yellow hair and an orange jacket.  
Kudo rolled over and stood up slowly. The boy was small in stature in comparison to Kudo, but his deep blue eyes seemed to hide a sort of grim determination which eerily put him on par with Kudo's greater height.

"Oops. Sorry about that!" the boy said, rubbing the back of his head and smiling wryly.

"It's OK." Kudo answered gruffly.

"Say… I haven't seen you before. And what's up with your headband? I've never seen that village sign before either. What's your name?"

"Kudo Takibi, of the Hidden Soul village." he said. Oddly enough, Kudo found himself warming to this fiery little kid, even though his voice had a rather annoying tone.

"Pleased to meet ya, Kudo," the boy said, and did a big, cheesy thumbs up and smiled, "I'm Naruto Uzumaki, the Hidden Leaf's future Hokage… believe it!"

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 **So... there you have it. The second chapter. I have to say I'm looking forward to writing more, I just need your support so please follow and review! Thanks again.**

 **-(Also what pairings should there be? I'm gonna stick with the show's ones, so NarutoxHinata and SasukexSakura ((don't hate)). KudoxTenTen anyone?)-**


	3. Chapter 3 - Part of the Gang

**For the 3rd chapter I decided to show some character interaction and Kudo's reactions to other familiar characters. Have fun! :)**

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"You must be here for the chunin exams right?" the kid who called himself Naruto asked loudly. "You look pretty strong. Probably no match for me though. Ohhh no, I'm one of the Leaf's best, believe it!"

"Sure you are. Says the guy who gets his ass kicked by Sakura half the time." The growling voice came from a fierce-looking boy who had walked up to them. He had sharp, beady eyes, red streaks down his face and wore a thick grey parka jacket, and on his shoulder sat a white puppy with floppy ears.

Behind him stood a short, cute girl with milky purple eyes and bluey-black hair, twiddling her fingers and with her head down, and even further behind her stood a tall young man with spiked black hair and round sunglasses, wearing a jacket that obscured his lower face.

"Well that's because I don't hit back, Kiba, you smelly mutt." said Naruto, and turned up his nose in a joking manner.

"I swear, if you're my opponent in the exam I'll rip your arms off you knucklehead!" said Kiba as he stepped in close.

"Please… don't argue. We-we need to stay calm for the exam." the girl piped up, but still spoke quietly.

"Hinata's right," Naruto said, and she blushed. "We don't need to get angry, we need to stay together! Speaking of which…" He turned to Kudo.

"Everyone, say hello to Kudo from the Hidden Soul village! He just got here."

"Hidden Soul?" asked Kiba, "Where the hell's that? I've never heard of it."

Kudo was astonished. Not by Kiba's ignorance, but by… these… people. They were so open and so… _different_.

Growing up, Kudo had only ever had one friend at the shinobi academy, but he moved to the Wind Nation when Kudo was only 7, so he didn't remember him all too well.  
Kudo wasn't… anti-social, so to speak, just not very comfortable talking to people, especially girls.  
He was good at fighting, not talking.  
In addition, the Soul custom was to be very reserved and quiet, so it rubbed off on him in his childhood.  
All this was a novelty to him, the loudness and the brashness, the joking. But strangley… he was comforted by it.

"Hello? Soul-boy?" Naruto said. They had been watching him daydream for the past 10 seconds. "You feelin' OK?"

Kudo zoned back in. "Oh yeah, umm, sorry. Yeah, the Hidden Soul village is on an island to the south-east of here, past the Water Nation, so it's pretty remote."

"You're the only guy I've seen around with that headband symbol. You come alone?" Kiba questioned, forcibly but not interrogatively.

"No, I came with my father, but I'm the only candidate from my village to be a chunin."

"You must be feeling pretty lonely then." said Naruto bluntly.

"No, I'm fine."

"You can come sit with us for a while, if-if you want?" said the Hinata girl in her tiny voice.

"No really, I'm OK."

"Come on, it'll be fun!" said Naruto enthusiastically, "I was about to go get some ramen, Teuchi makes a real good chilli pot too..."

"You know what? Why not." Kudo gave in, and the five of them walked off together.

 ** _Loudspeaker announcement_ : "Message to all Chunin Exam candidates, the written test will begin in 1 hour."**

"We had better hurry then." Said the boy with the sunglasses.

"You got it, Shino." Naruto quipped, "We've got heaps of time."

Kudo had some company and he was feeling prepared and relaxed.  
He felt great.

 _They are now at the Ichiraku Ramen bar, and have eaten well (especially Kudo). Kudo is getting along well with them, and they have begun discussing the exams and their predictions, although Naruto and Kiba are dominating the discussion. Kudo is not quite used to them yet._

"I'm counting on Shikamaru to pull something crazy off, ya know?" said Naruto.

"He always does. He's such a dreamer though, always somewhere else. Maybe that's why he's so lazy. Heck, he and Kudo would get on just fine, they have a lot in common!" Kiba joked. Everyone laughed.

 **"Message to all Chunin Exam candidates, the written test will begin in 5 minutes."**

"Crap! We're gonna be late if we don't hurry up!" Naruto exclaimed.

They all got up and started jogging towards the exam stadium, near where the testing halls were located.

"Good luck... everyone." Hinata said softly as they arrived.

Everyone thanked her and said the same to each other as they lined up outside the exam hall.  
This was it.

They were called into the hall one by one by 4 Leaf shinobi, at random so that the candidates couldn't cheat.

"Would the following candidates please step forwards:  
Sakura Haruno,  
Temari Sabaku,  
Zaku Abumi,  
Ino Yamanaka,  
Kankuro Sabaku,  
Shikamaru Nara,  
Ten-Ten Hanabira..."

It was at this point that Kudo looked up. It was by chance, he was merely moving idly, but when he saw the girl walk past, he froze for a second. She was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen, but then again, he'd never really 'seen' too many girls in his life. Her eyes were deep and brown, her hair was chestnut colored and done up in cute little buns and she dressed like a princess, but she walked with confidence and she had a tough look on her face.

As she passed, he was in awe, and for a second her eyes met with his.

Kudo felt himself gulp.

The edge of her lip folded briefly before she averted her short-lived gaze and carried on walking.

A few names later, Kudo was called up.

"Kudo Takibi...". He strolled up with his hands in his pockets, and he could feel the eyes all around him boring into his back. His unusual headband marked him out from the rest of them, and he was all too aware of it.  
He looked back before entering the hall and he could see Naruto holding his head in his hands with his teeth clamped together, and he looked very pale.

"At least I'm not the most guy nervous here." Kudo thought to himself.

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 **Hope you guys liked it. Remember to fave, follow and review if you want to see more. This taste of KudoxTenTen is only the beginning, mwahahaha... but have no fear, more is on the way!**

 **-(If you have any suggestions please let me know and if I include them make sure you ask for credit** **!)-**


	4. Chapter 4 - Tension

**Man, I've been pumping out these new chapters today. Just some expansion on KudoTen and a bit more build-up to the actual fights. Enjoy!**

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 _The test is over, and its true purpose is revealed to the candidates at the end: to test their 3 person teams' understanding of each other and their determination to move forward as a team. However, since Kudo was not originally in a team, he was made to sit the test by himself and his results were based on his knowledge alone._

 _He passes along with the Leaf genin and others, and has left the exam room._

Kudo felt relieved, but he knew that this was just the beginning. He had to work his way through the preliminaries next, a challenge he was willing to face.

There was to be a 20-minute break before the candidates would be pitted against each other, so he stepped outside into the fresh air and ran his hand through the black mass that was his hair.

Kudo saw the various groups and teams in front of him, discussing the ups and downs of the test. Naruto was the focus of a lot of discussion, due to the fact that he had shouted out multiple times during the test. Kudo was a hot topic, too, due to his apparent teamlessness, and he even heard someone say that it wasn't fair that he got to do the test based purely on the questions in front of him.

Kudo really didn't care. He was just glad to have passed.

He saw a large but divided group walking away, and he recognised Kiba and Naruto. He began to jog towards them and tripped over someone's foot. Kudo toppled over and barged into a tough-looking young man. He whirled on Kudo and barked in his face.

"What the hell do you think you're doing you little shit? Watch where you're going or you'll be sorry!" the older boy pulled his head backwards and then brought it forwards sharply, his Hidden Sound headband smashing into Kudo's. The move backfired.

Kudo stood perfectly still, unmoved and unhurt. The other boy clutched his head and moaned in pain, falling onto his bottom.

"Why you!" He exclaimed as he scrambled back up.

Everyone around was looking at them now, the ruckus had alerted them.

"Zaku will not be humiliated! You hear me! Take this!" the boy shouted aggressively as he brought his fist swinging round.

Kudo did nothing. He couldn't risk being disqualified at this point. _What would his father think of him_?

The boy's punch was not lazy, in fact, he had put a lot of power behind it. It was accurate and well positioned; the boy had obvious skill.

Still, he was no match for Kudo.

Zaku's fist smashed the side of Kudo's head. He didn't even blink. Zaku's arm was crushed under the force of his own punch: he had, in effect, just attacked a block of steel.

Every bone in his arm shattered and blood ran from the wind-holes in his palms. He screamed in pain and fainted, the crash of his limp body on the floor interrupted the short silence that followed.  
Kudo bent over and calmly put Zaku into the recovery position so that he wouldn't choke on his own tongue while he was unconscious, and carried on walking towards Naruto's group.

People all around were now whispering to each other.

"What _is_ he?" one girl asked another.

"I don't know. He sure seems strong though, I hope I don't have to fight him."

"He's kinda cute though right?"

Kudo stifled a cough and carried on walking as though nothing had happened. When he arrived at Naruto's group, everyone was looking at him in shock.  
Kiba was the first to pipe up.

"Kudo, man! Wow! You were crazy back there! You must be made of metal or something! What kind of training have you been doing?" he asked, astonished.

"Push-ups, sit-ups, and plenty of juice." replied Kudo.

 **"Message to all Chunin Exam candidates, the preliminary matches will begin in 5 minutes."**

"This Kudo has proven himself to be a worthy opponent! Let us just hope that he does not falter when he faces a real fighter such as myself!". A voice came from the front of the group.

"Lee, shut it, seriously, give the guy a break."

"Sorry Ten-ten, but I am just itching to show my true power, the power of youth!"

His speech pattern was annoying and his vocabulary choice was cringe-worthy, and as he came into view, Kudo couldn't help but think that his appearance suited him all too well.  
Then it dawned on him.  
Ten-ten?  
The girl who had looked at him before the test.

She was a part of this group of friends? Who were almost _his_ friends now?  
His heart lurched.  
She turned around and smiled.

"So, who's the new guy?" she said happily. Even her voice was mesmerising to him.

"That's Kudo from the Hidden Soul village. He hung out with us earlier today... he's pretty cool, believe it!" said Naruto, as enthusiastic as ever.

"Can't say I've ever heard of it. Pleased to meet you, anyway." she smiled again.

Kudo hesitated for a second. "H-hey. Pleased to meet you too I guess."  
Soon he had been introduced to everyone.

"Say, where's Sakura? Shikamaru, you seen her?" Naruto asked.

"Probably tugging on Sasuke's shirt somewhere. Girls like that are such a drag." the boy named Shikamaru said slowly, and yawned. Kudo could see what Kiba meant about him being lazy.

Naruto spotted her, and surprise-surprise, she was trying (but failing) to have a conversation with Sasuke, a moody boy with dark eyes and floppy black hair. Naruto grinned and shuffled away towards them.

 **"The Preliminaries are now starting. Will the candidates please line up outside the minor arena."**

Again, the remaining candidates lined up and were called into the arena.  
It was a large, rectangular room, with railed balconies on either side. On the far side, there was a massive stone sculpture of two hands performing the "ram" handsign, and the walls were white-washed and clean. The exam proctor stood just in front of the hands, his own hands in his pockets.

The balconies were soon filled with aspiring chunin and their senseis, and after a short run-down of the rules, the random name picker started up to decide the first match.

Kudo was tense.

* * *

 **Suspense is building for our young hero. Had a lot of fun with this one, what with Kudo being a badass and all. Hoping to get some new chapters up by tomorrow. Thanks!**


	5. Chapter 5 - Kudo vs Lee

**Another chapter. Now we're getting into the fights! Remember to please follow and favorite, it would be much appreciated!**

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 _Various matches follow, such as Kiba vs Naruto, Shikamaru vs Kin, Sasuke vs Yoroi and some others. Kudo is waiting for his turn on the balcony with the other Leaf genin who have not yet been picked, and he is currently standing with Neji, Lee… and Ten-ten._

 _Shino and Zaku are currently fighting._

"Why is that guy allowed to take part?" muttered Neji in his moody voice. He squinted his milky-purple eyes. "His arm's broken and he attacked another candidate outside of the arena."

"Everyone deserves a chance, no matter the circumstances!" came Lee's loud reply.

"Too bad you don't have one. Especially if you go up against me. Fate has chosen me to be your superior, and that's final."

"We will see about that, Neji!"

Ten-ten, tired of their constant arguments, went over to Kudo who was leaning over the balcony and came up next to him, while Neji and Lee carried on behind them.

Shino's bugs had just exploded Zaku's other arm.

"Hey again." Ten-ten said happily.

"H-hey." Kudo stuttered. He was overwhelmed. _She_ wanted to talk to _him_?

"How are you holding up? You feeling ready?" she asked.

"I-I guess so?" Kudo smiled anxiously. As much as he was excited that she was talking to him, he was also petrified by her.

Ten-ten laughed. It was a beautiful laugh. "You really are nervous, huh? Just relax, it's probably way better when you get out there."

"Oh… umm, no… I mean, its not about the fight, its just that I…" Kudo was finding it hard to string the _damn_ sentence together.

"What is it then?" She said as she un-knotted and re-did one of her buns. Her brown hair looked luscious and soft.

"Nothing." Kudo said definitively.

 **"Would the candidates Kudo Takibi and Rock Lee please step forwards. If they do not they will both be disqualified."**

"Shit!" he thought to himself. He hadn't realised that their names had come up on the board.

"Do your best!" said Ten-ten, and she put her hand on his for a second, and then turned to join the others.

Who was she going to support? Her teammate or this guy she'd just met? Who were the others going to support?  
Kudo didn't let the questions bother him as he leaped the 12 feet off the balcony to the floor below, and Lee followed soon after.

They took their positions.

Lee bowed elaborately. Kudo simply nodded his head in a respectful way.  
Lee had a determined frown on his face.

"I hope you are ready, Soul-boy!"

"As do I."

The proctor raised his hands and then brought them down.

"You may begin."

Lee was off.

He ran at Kudo with surprising speed, with his fist drawn below his belt. He threw a jab; it was well-aimed, powerful and direct.  
And fast.

Very fast.

Kudo, however, dodged it with ease. The punch sailed over his head as he ducked, and he pushed Lee away.

Lee growled as he skidded to a halt, and then came in for the second attack. And the third. And fourth.

Lee was attacking him from all sides now at high speed, but Kudo wasn't dodging anymore. He simply stood very still, his hands flying everywhere, blocking every one of Lee's attacks.

Lee persisted.

Now Kudo wasn't even blocking.

He stood there, taking a beating from Lee, but he did not move. The hall resounded with the sound of snapping chakra at the points of Lee's attacks, which bounced off Kudo's hide and left him unaffected.

"What in the hell…?" said Neji quietly to himself.

Sasuke had been examining the fight carefully. Surely, no-one had muscles that tough? It had to be some kind of armor-type jutsu. Sasuke activated his sharingan.  
If a ninjutsu or genjutsu was being used, Sasuke would have known. But no, there was nothing more to this "armor" than Kudo's own body. He frowned, puzzled at Kudo's ability.

Finally, Kudo grabbed Lee mid-kick and threw him into the hand-sign sculpture. He bounced off it and flopped back onto the floor. Lee got up slowly and looked Kudo dead in the eyes.

He reached down to his feet and began pulling up his orange leg-bands, and unstrapped what looked like leg-weights. He dropped them to the floor. There was a thud.  
The floor cracked and dust spread. Those were some heavy weights.

Lee rocketed off the wall behind the balcony and came full pelt at Kudo, much faster than before. He flipped forwards and brought his leg crashing down on his shoulder. It bounced straight back up.  
As his leg went up again, Kudo finally made his first real move. He drew his arm across his body, crouched, jumped into the air and unleashed a powerful backfist.

As his fist flew, it was engulfed in blue energy, which dissippated at the sound of Lee's cracking ribs.

"Aaarrgghh!" Lee cried as he flew off to the side.

Kudo landed again, balanced and poised. He did not want to hurt this Lee too badly, he had nothing against him.  
And besides, he didn't want Ten-ten to hate him.

Kudo crouched slowly as Lee got up. He put his hands close together at the side of his belt and concentrated. A small, humming yellow ball of light was forming in his palms.

"What's that?!" asked Naruto in disbelief. "He must have some serious chakra control. It's kind of like my Rasengan."

"I'll check it out." replied Neji as he activated his byakugan. He gasped. He could see no chakra network in Kudo's body, and the ball of light he was forming did not show up as chakra.

"It's not chakra!" he said, astonished.

"I don't know what kind of training they do at the Hidden Soul, but this is something else." said Kakashi, who was leaning on the back wall.

Kudo raised his hands suddenly and shouted. The ball fired from his hands, sailing towards Lee.

It him just as he stood up, and he flew backwards, denting the wall on the other side.  
Lee was on the floor, with smoke rising from his chest and blood coming from his mouth.

"Kudo Takibi wins the fight."

No-one said a word.

Kudo turned around and realised that everyone was staring at him.

He was puzzled, but then he noticed the hole that his attack had burnt into his pants while he had been charging it up.

And from it came a long, brown and fuzzy tail,  
that moved as though it had a life of its own.

* * *

 **Yay! I'm thinking of following this until the end of Naruto (as in part 1). It'll be tough but I'm prepared. And, as always, please review if you want to see more!**

 **(Also, I was thinking... Shukaku vs Oozaru?)**


	6. Chapter 6 - Anger

**Another tense chapter coming up! Trying to develop Kudo a bit, and his relationships with the other characters.  
As always, please fave, review and follow if you want to see more! (Have fun!)**

* * *

 _Kudo is standing in the middle of the arena, and all eyes are on him._

"What the actual fu-" Ino started to say before Sakura interrupted her.

"Oh my God, what the hell _is_ that?" she exclaimed, pointing at the fuzzy brown appendage.

There was immediately a hubbub of chat and discussion, and some strange looks at Kudo. Kudo felt like an outsider; even Ten-ten was looking at him funnily as she jumped over the railing to run over to Lee, along with some others.  
There was some joking and pointing, which escalated into insults, when Naruto suddenly jumped down into the middle of the ring, beside Kudo.

"What the hell are you laughin' at!" He shouted into the crowds that filled the balconies.

Everyone hushed.

"It's not that weird! Kiba's basically a dog, just look at his ugly teeth and his nails!". Kiba growled, especially angry because he had also lost to Naruto a few fights before.

"So what if he's different! You wouldn't understand, you're all the same, rolling around in a stinking puddle of your own conformity! I've taken crap from people all my life, and I'm not about to let it happen to him too! Go screw yourselves."

There was silence.

Kudo was relieved that someone had stepped in to help him, he really was no good at standing up for himself.

"Thanks, Naruto." he said.

"Don't worry about it," Naruto said as he grinned. And then he whispered: "Anyway, it'll make me look good in front of Sakura, right?"

"Well, considering a lot of what you just said was directed at her…"

"Oh. Yeah." Naruto's smile drooped.

" **NARUTO**!" an angry girl's voice echoed through the room.

Naruto ran off clumsily, with Sakura snapping at his heels.

Kudo had now wrapped his tail around his waist; there was no point hiding it because everyone had seen it. As he walked towards the others who were with Lee, waiting for the medics to take him away, someone would give him the odd glance from the balconies and would frown.  
Kudo stopped behind Ten-ten, Shikamaru, and Hinata, who were crowding around the medics. They lifted Lee up on a stretcher and began to carry him away.

Kudo tapped Ten-ten on the shoulder, gently.  
She spun around and looked at him with a blank expression.

His heart sank.

She wasn't angry, was she?

"Is-is he… OK?" Kudo asked nervously and quietly.

Hearing him speak like that made her relax. He was genuinely concerned; this boy had a heart.  
She smiled very faintly.

"Well, not OK by my standards, but knowing Lee, he'll survive. He'll probably be ready to go in no time."

Kudo sighed with relief.

Perhaps, just perhaps, he could make it through the whole ordeal without upsetting anyone.

* * *

 _The Preliminaries are now drawing to a close. Ino has fought Sakura, Neji has battled Hinata and Ten-ten lost to the skills of the older Temari. Kudo is slightly relieved by the fact that he doesn't have to fight her and probably hurt her in the Major Arena match._

 _Everyone is leaving the arena, as the qualifiers have a whole day of rest before the next fights commence._

 _It is now dark outside._

Kudo had had a nice, long shower, had put on some fresh clothes and was leaving the arena. Just as he turned the corner, he saw a pair of bright, milky-purple eyes.

"H-Hinata?" he asked cautiously.

"Unfortunately, 'Lady Hyuuga' went home early." said a rather more masculine voice.

"Neji?" Kudo asked, "A-are you OK? Did you need something?"

"Oh no, I'm fine, I just have a few questions about your… encounter with that bushy-brow earlier today." came his sarcastic reply.

"Ask away." Kudo said hastily, wishing not to be delayed too much. He felt uncomfortable, and Ikidori wouldn't be too pleased if he came back late.

"I couldn't help but notice with my byakugan that you lack a certain… feature, which you really ought to have as a shinobi. Your chakra. And yet you managed to pull off that… 'energy blast' thing."

"Yeah. Well I wasn't born with any chakra, my Dad told me that."

"Still. It's fascinating but it really isn't fair. Show me it."

"Listen, Neji, I really do have to go-" Kudo was reluctant to show anyone his true power outside of a fight, and he started to walk away.

Neji zipped in front of him.

"Show me now, or, if you want, I can make Ten-ten believe certain things about you…" he snarled.

Kudo was starting to get angry. Had Neji realised his attraction to her? And he would blackmail him just so that he could _see_ his power, let alone _learn_ of it?

"Fine, then." Kudo decided angrily.

He tucked his arms in, and clenched his fists so tightly that they began to shake. He started to glow, a pale blue light was illuminating the ground around him and Neji's startled face.  
He growled and bared his teeth, and the light exploded outwards. Neji flinched. Rocks were starting to move away and bushes were starting to rustle.

Little by little Neji was being pushed backwards, his sandals scraping on the ground.

The ground shook violently.

Neji was taken off his feet. He crashed into the side of a nearby house and fell onto his hands and knees.

"Got what you wanted!?" Kudo snapped.

He powered down as Neji scrambled to his feet.

"You're a _freak_ , you know that?! A freak and nothing more!" Neji said in angst before he walked away into the evening's darkness.

* * *

 **How was that? Hope you thoroughly enjoyed it, expect a lot more action next chapter and a lot more revelations about Kudo's saiyan power. The battle awaits!**

 **-(Gonna have a nice big Shukaku vs. Oozaru battle, but haven't decided on the Orochimaru situation yet!)-**


	7. Chapter 7 - Saiyan vs Sand (Part 1)

**So... it's finally time! Kudo vs Gaara! _This chapter will be a bit longer than usual._**

 **I thought I'd never get this far (well I did to be honest!). Enjoy yourselves and remember, fave, follow and review if you like this and you want to see more. ;)**

* * *

 _Kudo has slept badly, troubled by his thoughts. He wakes, says goodbye to his father and says he will see him at the arena.  
_ _He spends the day meditating and tries to keep away from the others, Ten-ten included, so as not to distract himself._

 _Various fights take place over the course of the day, such as Shikamaru vs Temari and Naruto vs Neji.  
_ _Sasuke is nowhere to be found for his fight with Gaara, and so Kudo has been made to fight Gaara instead._

 _It is now the evening and close to being dark._

Kudo stepped forwards into the artificial lights of the stadium. He could feel the tension hanging in the air; these people didn't want him…  
No, they came here for the main event, the Uchiha boy whose family was murdered by his older brother against the mysterious and apparently crazy sand-wielding demon-child.

Kudo was a side-show.

He walked slowly towards the middle of the huge arena, which was fully equipped with trees and high walls. It was surrounded by stands which seated 1000s of people, perhaps more.  
He took his place on the left side of the referee.

Gaara was staring him down with his greeny-blue eyes, with a blank but rather menacing look on his face.

Kudo immediately felt uncomfortable and had to hide his fear.

* * *

Then he felt something change in his mind, like someone had just flicked an internal switch.

* * *

"What am I thinking!" he thought to himself, "I'm probably _miles_ stronger than this guy! I've shown that already.". He growled. "I haven't got time to worry. I'm going all out, and I don't care what happens, to me **or** to him!"

Kudo frowned and bared his teeth slightly. "I'm not scared." He said to himself. "I'll _destroy_ him if that's what it takes! I'll not be stopped from becoming a chunin!"

He clenched his fists and heard his knuckles crack.

"Let the fight… commence."

Kudo was gone.

Gaara was surprised. He looked around briefly and then raised his hands. A whirl of sand started to rise about him, like a dynamic wall.  
He looked up suddenly. There came Kudo at surprising speed from above, his arms tucked in and his leg outstretched.

The sand started to form a barrier at the point where Kudo's foot would make contact.  
To Gaara and everyone's surprise, Kudo passed straight through it like a ghost.

And he passed straight through Gaara himself.

Gaara, assuming it was some sort of illusion jutsu, lowered his barrier, but not a second later, 'another' Kudo flew in in exactly the same way.

This time, Gaara didn't have enough time.

His foot connected with Gaara's face, knocking part of it away in a crumble of sand. The audience gasped.

Kudo hardly noticed, he was too concentrated on beating the shit out of his opponent.

He followed up with a flurry of ear-splittingly loud punches which knocked Gaara backwards continuously, and more and more sand flaked from his skin.  
Kudo crouched down quickly and jumped forwards, fist raised.

The punch connected with Gaara's chest, and in a puff of sound and shattering blue light, he flew backwards faster than the eye could see and splatted onto to the wall like a squashed insect.

There was silence in the audience.

"Gaara! NOO!" came a pained cry from the audience, and Kudo recognised it as Temari's.

Kudo almost felt himself slip into his usual, pitiful and emotional self at the sound of her voice.

He shook his head and started sprinting towards Gaara, who was now trickling down the wall as a mass of dark-red sand.  
The sand began moving slowly towards the middle of the arena, and was starting to build itself up.  
Kudo had seen his fight with that Hidden Rain genin in the preliminaries.  
Gaara was a special case.  
He had the ability to 're-form' himself if he got damaged, and Kudo wasn't about to let that happen now.

He skidded to a halt in front of the mass of sand that was beginning to take the shape of a teenage boy. Blue light started to engulf his body as he raised his hands.

The pale-blue energy was now bellowing from him, making a loud and constantly repeating "whoosh" sound. His hair flew up as he tilted his head backwards slightly and let out a cry of sheer power and rage.

Hundreds of droplets of blue fire were expelled from his palms like torrential rain.

The thudding of solid light against sand echoed through the whole arena, and a huge cloud of dust was starting to rise into the cool evening air.

After what seemed like an eternity, Kudo finally stopped his relentless assault.

There was nothing left except a huge crater in the ground, and there was no sand in sight.  
The audience exploded into discussion and shouting.

Kudo dropped to one knee, exhausted, but relieved that he had finally done it.

* * *

He sat crouched there for a while, and as he started to get up, a shadow began to loom over him.  
He looked up and a column of sand was towering above him, and growing taller by the second.

The column began to sprout offshoots of sand which crashed onto the floor around Kudo, and he quickly leaped back a few yards to clear the distance.

It wasn't over yet.

The column was still growing, but now it was starting to take a shape. The offshoots were thickening and splaying out at the bottom, and blue 'veins' were spreading all around them.

"What the..." Kudo said as he took a few steps backwards.

The sand-figure had stopped growing now.  
Kudo was in shock.  
It took up at least two-thirds of the stadium.

The stadium lights swung around to illuminate this behemoth of sand.  
It was a huge, rodent-like creature, like a squirrel but fatter and a million times as large.

It upreared its head and let out a ground-shaking roar.

There was immediately screaming and panic in the audience, and soon many of the seats had been emptied.

Kankuro and Temari were shocked. They shouted in vain at the beast, telling it to stop, telling it to calm down.  
Of course, it did not listen to them, Gaara maybe would have but _this_ thing...

This wasn't Gaara.

* * *

Kudo ran.

A huge, sandy paw crashed into the ground behind him.

He looked over his shoulder, and as he did, he felt himself being swept off his feet.  
Sand filled his nose and eyes, and he spluttered and coughed as he was immersed in it.

He was thrown into the air by the beast and he sailed far above the stadium.

He reached the pinnacle of his flight and then began his descent.  
Kudo screamed.  
He was tough enough to survive this kind of fall no matter what, even to come away unharmed, if he landed right.

But he could not land right at this rate.  
He approached the ground at great speed, and he closed his eyes and hoped for the best.

Kudo suddenly stopped falling.

"Huh?" he said, puzzled.

He was floating. Above the stadium. Not plummeting to injury, but hovering.

"I-I can... **_fly?_** "

The beast below had broken out of the stadium and had smashed through the village wall. It was currently swatting at Kudo with its giant arms.

Kudo looked up into the sky.

What a mess he'd gotten himself into.  
What a mess he'd gotten this whole village into.  
He had always known he wouldn't manage to get through it without upsetting people.

With his kind of power, his father had said, "destruction is inevitable. Either by others' jealousy of it, or by your own lack of self-control. You must control your power, my son, or disaster will surely strike."

It was just him now. Just him, and the full moon, floating in the night sky.

And just as he set his eyes on the moon, his heart skipped a beat...

and his vision began to blur.

* * *

 **Phew! Now _that_ was some action. I know there wasn't any Oozaru in this chapter but I just felt it needed a bit more build up before the big one. Don't fret, all will come in good time.**

 **And as always, thanks for reading!**


	8. Chapter 8 - Saiyan vs Sand (Part 2)

**Here it is, folks. The big one. Another slightly longer chapter for you to read, but that's only cause there is so much going on in this damned fight! Enjoy.**

* * *

 _The sand-wielding one-tailed behemoth known as Shukaku has transformed by his host, Gaara, into himself. He is currently just outside the Hidden Leaf walls, having broken through them. The forest around him has been drenched in a mountain of sand._

 _The stadium is now almost empty, but just as everyone is crowding around the exits, they fall under a powerful genjutsu that freezes them to the spot._

 _From all around, Hidden Sound soldiers and Hidden Sand soldiers approach._

Kudo felt like a stick of butter in a furnace.

His vision blurred and his heart rate increased by the second. He could feel his body warming up. His head rang in pain, and he clamped his teeth together.

His mouth would not shut.

He felt it open up, wider and wider, and his now elongating canines were grinding against each other.

He screamed in pain and fury, and as he did, his voice got deeper and deeper, and far, far louder.

Kudo felt hair sprouting from everywhere on his skin. His tail bursted from his pants, and soon his clothes had all ripped, but he was far from naked.  
He was covered in thick, brown fur, and his face began to morph; it became ugly and ape-like. His eyes flooded with blood, and appeared to be completely red.

Kudo felt his feet touch the ground.

They were more like small houses than feet now.  
He had grown so huge that he had reached the stadium floor, all the way from where he had been floating.

Kudo didn't think about any of this. He was filled with a rage, a fury so powerful that it consumed his mind.

He let out an almighty roar, and pounded his chest with his huge brown hands.

He spun around slowly, looking for something, anything to destroy, to rip apart and stamp upon until it was nothing but a pile of dust at the bottom of a crater.  
His eyes locked with a beast of similar size, khaki-colored, sitting in a mountain of sifting sand and covered in blue veins. It bared its sandy teeth at him.

That was enough for Kudo.

It just confirmed his need for destruction even more.

Kudo ran at the other beast in leaps and bounds.  
"AAARRRRGGHHHHHHH!" he cried as he swung his huge ape-hand at it.

The connection of the slap was deafening. A shockwave of compressed air shot out from under Kudo's grizzly palm, and the ground shook violently.

All the battling shinobi on the other side of the stadium were thrown off their feet.

Shukaku's huge snout was cracked down the middle. He bellowed in anger and spun on his tower of a leg in the opposite direction to Kudo's slap.  
He dragged his huge foot through the ground before bringing it into the air, delivering a vicious spinning kick to Kudo's gigantic ribs.

Kudo was knocked sideways, back into the stadium. He rolled over and slid to a halt.

He stood up slowly, opened his jaws and roared.

As he did, the roof of his mouth started to glow yellow, and an absolutely huge ball of solid yellow energy was soon floating on his tongue.

A thick beam of light shot from it, straight towards Shukaku.

Shukaku was quick to react. He sat backwards onto his hind legs and the mountain of sand he was sitting on started to shift. It swirled around in front of him, forming a monstrously thick protective barrier, just as the beam of energy was arriving.  
The beam of immense heat crashed into the sand wall, and moved no further. It was constant and was melting the sand as it hit, so Shukaku kept bringing up new sand to replace it.

The two beasts each took an almighty step forwards.

* * *

The 3rd Hokage had been watching the whole time.

He was currently standing atop the roof at the back of the stadium, the only part left undamaged.  
A tall man with white skin, dark yellow eyes with black slits for pupils and purple eyelids was standing next to him.

The tall man was holding a kunai to the Hokage's throat.

"Tell me, Orochimaru," the old man said disgustedly, "Is this really what you want? What is the point of all this... chaos, this... mayhem? What does it achieve?"

The man called Orochimaru licked his lips slowly. His tongue was pointy and long, like it belonged to some sort of reptile.

"Not much, to be quite honest." his voice was soft but had a hard edge to it, which made it sound creepy and even more reptilian.  
"I'll admit that this giant monkey wasn't part of my original plan, but he's been quite the pleasant surprise.  
The more the merrier, I say."

"But... b-but you-" his elderly hostage began to say.

"Let's just say that I like things when they move. A still world is boring; there is no interaction between forces, there is no... _life.  
_ So, I need my world to be changing and mobile... it's more interesting that way."

"But there will be even less life to fill it if you carry on destroying like this!" the Hokage rasped.

"That's where you're wrong. Life can be found in a whole manner of things, it is not just the walking and the breathing which possess it." he squinted and he broke into a sly and malicious grin.  
"The force of destruction is not purposeless. It is a force of nature...

 _ **My**_ _nature._ "

* * *

Kudo and Shukaku were moving ever closer to each other.

Kudo concentrated on his huge beam of energy harder and harder, driven by his internal rage.  
Shukaku made a guttural and gritty growl and forced even more sand into his barrier.

Eventually they were only tens of yards apart.  
Kudo was not feeling the strain of his attack on his own body, his reserves of energy were seemingly neverending.

Shukaku, however, was starting to falter.

He was putting in less and less sand mass with every second that passed, and soon the yellow inferno was only being held back by a few yards of rapidly-melting sand.  
Shukaku, although he was as furious as Kudo was, had the advantage in the sense that he could exert more self-control over his actions and could make desicions; he could make predictions and form a plan, something which Kudo was in no state to be able to do.

Kudo was evidently not used to the form he had taken; it was as if he was a completely different being now.

Just as the last 'sheets' of sand melted away, Shukaku made his move.

He sidestepped _just_ before the beam had pierced his defences and leaped at Kudo. The beam carried on into the darkness, illuminating the mountains as it flew.

Kudo was still closing his open jaws after his attack when Shukaku hit him. He had not realised he had missed.

Shukaku flopped his whole body onto his opponent, crushing him into the ground.

Again, it shuddered.

Immediately, sand began to pour into Kudo's open and roaring mouth at a surprising rate. It clogged his eyes and he coughed with extreme force. Sand puffed out but it was still coming in faster than his body could remove it.

Shukaku gave him an earth-shifting punch to the snout for good measure.

But he was still getting weaker.

Somewhere deep in his bestial mind, he knew he had to end the fight quickly before he returned to being Gaara, the puny little boy that he had to so reluctantly obey.  
If that happened, they would both die to this formidable ape-man.

He was running out of time.

* * *

 **Boom! The fight I promised finally came. There is more to come, though. Kudo's going ape shit on Shukaku's ass! But can the sand-demon prevail? If you want to find out, please follow, fave, and as always, review if you want to see more!**


	9. Chapter 9 - A Beast's Blood

**How will this epic battle turn out...? I know you want to know, so carry on reading you dummy!  
Don't forget to follow, fave and review :)**

* * *

 _The Sound and Sand vs Leaf shinobi battle is still raging in the streets._

 _Gaara was supposed to be taken away, but due to his transformation into Shukaku, the plan has been changed and his departure delayed._

 _Temari and Kankuro are close by, watching Shukaku and Kudo fight. They know that soon, Shukaku will turn back into Gaara, and then Gaara will be killed._

 _They have vowed not to allow this to happen._

Kudo' huge lungs were not full of air anymore, they were full of sand.

He couldn't roar, neither could he see. The grains irritated his giant eyeballs and he tried to brush the sand out, but Shukaku had stepped on his arms and he couldn't move.

Instinctively, Kudo fired two solid beams of heat from his eyes, and the sand that clogged them vaporised instantly.

He carried on firing, and the beams flew like beacons of light into the sky.  
In one mighty push, he managed to fill his mighty lungs with the blazing light, and from his mouth came a gargantuan sphere of raw energy which carried tons of liquid glass out with it.

The sphere ripped through Shukaku's chest, causing him to fall backwards off Kudo's body.

Kudo was free. He could breathe and see once more, and he angrily jumped to his feet.

The ground cracked underneath the impact of his landing.  
He took a furious step nearer to his opponent, who was now lying down on the forest… and whose sandy body was starting to recede and lose its shape.

* * *

"No! Kankuro, if we don't do something quickly, Gaara is going to die. We can't let that happen!" Temari pleaded with her brother.  
"I know." Kankuro replied. After a few seconds of thinking, his eyes widened in realisation. "Wait. I have an idea… and I think it might work. This… 'form' of his, it might have something to do with his tail…"

"What makes you think that?"

"He never has his tail out, does he? And there would be no reason to hide it, because everyone knows about it already... and a lot of people have seen it."

"So you think..."

"Yes. It could be his weakness. He never has it out because he doesn't want it exposed in a fight."

"But what if it isn't?"

"Then...  
we die.  
I've only got one shot at this, and his tail's our best bet. If getting rid of the tail turns him back to normal, then we've bought some time to get Gaara out of here."

"How are we gonna do it?"

He explained his plan to his sister.

"It's as good a plan as any," she said. "I'll get on the roof."

She leaped up from the stands onto the roof above, and took out her giant fan.

Kankuro began to unwrap a contraption he had been saving for his match with the bug-wielder, Shino, the match he had withdrawn from. It was a puppet, a large wooden 'scarecrow' of sorts, loaded with a variety of weapons that he could control by means of chakra 'puppet strings'.

He established control over it and made it leap up into the air, towards the middle of the stadium.

"Temari! Now!" he shouted to his sister.

She grunted as she swung her giant fan, which produced a huge wave of powerul wind. The force of the wind hit the puppet, and caused it to fly off towards the battling beasts.

Kankuro started to sweat as he struggled to maintain control over the puppet as the distance increased.

* * *

Kudo was preparing a huge stomp, his ape-leg was bent and raised above Shukaku, who was now considerably smaller and weaker.

Just as he was about to strike, he felt a sharp pain in his back. More specifically, in his tail.  
Kankuro's puppet had reached him, and in one large sweep of a very long built-in blade, it had severed his tail clean off.

The huge snake of brown fur crashed onto the ground.

Kudo felt himself shrinking. The fur all around his body began to recede and his eyes began to return to their original colour.  
His snout shortened and his teeth unsharpened, and very soon he looked almost normal and was only about ten yards tall.

Finally, he stopped shrinking, he was his normal height and he looked like himself again, but he was completely naked.  
He fell to his knees in confusion and exhaustion…  
but soon he blacked out and crashed face-first onto the forest floor,  
with the only remainder of his tail being a short and bloody stump on his lower back.

* * *

Kudo woke hours later.

 _Temari and Kankuro have retrieved a weakened Gaara while Kudo was out cold. They escaped through the broken wall of the village and travelled through the forest, when they ran into Sasuke Uchiha._

 _Temari went on with Gaara and Kankuro stayed to fight Sasuke, but after the arrival of Shino (who volunteered to fight Kankuro instead) Sasuke carried on to catch Temari and Gaara while they fled._

He got up slowly; he felt dizzy and disorientated.  
A sharp pain was coming from his back, and he reached around to massage it away. His fingers passed a bump where his tail should have been, and there was blood on his hand when he took it away.

"M-my tail!" Kudo said in shock.

He suddenly came to his senses. He was standing in the middle of a flattened forest,  
 _completely naked._

"What the FUCK?!" he cried.

The last thing he remembered was floating above the stadium. Yes, that was it, he had suddenly discovered that he could fly. That was where his memory had ended.  
It still didn't explain why he had woken up nude in a forest with his tail missing.

He turned around slowly.

Before him was a huge breakage in the village wall, and he could see into the other side of the stadium, which had also been half-destroyed.  
That must've been that sand-monster.

Kudo broke into a run.

He sprinted round the perimeter of the village for a few seconds at full speed, and he skidded to a halt in the trees just next to the village gates.  
In front of him, a furious battle was raging, with uniformed and masked Hidden Sound ninjas fighting in formation against various Konoha shinobi and other warriors.

He couldn't go out in his condition. He needed clothes.

"If only I had goddamn chakra!" he thought to himself, "Then maybe I could... use a genjutsu or something, so that I looked like I had clothes on! Maybe if I could do ninjutsu, I could even create real clothes!  
Well, I'll give anything a shot!"

He put his hands together in the first hand-sign he could think of and concentrated. His efforts were fruitless.

"Gahhh. Should've known that wouldn't work!"  
In a last-ditch effort, he raised his hand above his head and pointed it down on himself.  
Light shot from it and flooded his body.  
The feeling of the energy that was emitted was... strange, somehow different to the type of energy he usually dealt with.

The light faded, and to his surprise, he was now wearing a red and black shinobi jacket with black pants, and his Hidden Soul headband was strapped perfectly onto his forehead.  
It had all been... _conjured_ out of nothing.

"I-I can do... ninjutsu?" he said quietly in disbelief. "That's new."

He crouched and leaped into the air, sailing a few feet over the trees in front of him,  
and he landed with a thud in the middle of the battling shinobi.

He stood up tall and ran a hand through his ever-spiky hair.

* * *

 **C'mon people, Piccolo's infamous 'clothes beam' (-aka. Magic Materialisation ((Thanks E.427))-) made an appearance, _surely_ that alone will be enough to satisfy your needs.  
** **Unfortunately not, so I guess I'll have to keep on writing!**

 **(Also, to answer some questions, Kudo is most likely going to become a super saiyan sooner or later. Also, if you're patient, we might be seeing some familiar DBZ characters soon enough!)**


	10. Chapter 10 (Special) - Exodus, Alone

**Kudo the Saiyan had to come from somewhere, right? I think this little chapter should reveal a few things:**

* * *

 ** _-14 ¼ years ago-_**

 _The baby was on its own._

 _Drifting in a void of darkness that was dotted with specks of white light, that seemed distant and unreachable._

 _The only thing preventing it from drowning in the nothingness of the outside was a sheet of white metal, moulded into a ball, and a pane of thick, red-tinted glass._

 _Death would surely come for it. The ball had stopped moving on its own, it was no longer covered in the white light which made it move so fast and with such… purpose, and direction._  
 _It was merely drifting now in a straight line._

 _The baby began to cry._

 _Where was his uncaring father? His fleetingly affectionate mother? Where was the bosom he had been comforted by for such a short time, before he had been put in this cramped little capsule and sent away?_

 _The baby knew not the answers to these questions._

 _He just cried._  
 _And cried._

* * *

 **"GET HIM!"**

The shout came from further down the ship.

Kabij barely registered it.

He was already sprinting away at full pelt.

He didn't care about his 'Saiyan pride' at the moment, he just wanted to survive this one.

He had to get away.

From _him_.

For his son's sake.

In his heart, he had always known that Freeza was not all that he seemed to be. He had never been quite honest with the Saiyans.  
He had always given them the toughest jobs and the dirtiest jobs, and they followed his orders with a mixture of fear... and oddly enough, gratitude.  
Freeza had given them an opportunity, a chance for them to revel in their might and live without a care in the world, which was, on a basic level, what the average Saiyan wanted from life.

Recently, that had changed.

Freeza had begun to realise that the Saiyans were getting to be…  
 _too powerful_ to be his subordinates (many liked to think that he even feared them),  
and a considerable number of Saiyans harbored resentment for Freeza's constant dictatorship.

So, he had decided to get rid of them.

And get rid of them he would.

 _ **That's**_ why Kabij was running.  
He knew Freeza would slaughter every last one of them.

Like **animals.**

Kabij was one of the Saiyans who had accompanied their King, Vegeta, to Freeza's quarters so as to overthrow him and ensure the Saiyan race's independence from his rule.

Vegeta and the rest of his escort were killed a few seconds later, right in front his eyes.

Kabij was met in the corridors of Freeza's ship by squadrons of armed soldiers, who had their blasters raised at him.  
He vaporized all of them in an instant.  
He dashed through the smoke, smashed the airlock and flew away at full speed, towards the the planet Vegeta.

* * *

After a few minutes of high-speed travel, he arrived.

He landed with force on the roof of the local infirmary and crashed through it.  
He fell into a corridor along with glass and rubble and broke into a run.

Why was he doing this? Shouldn't he be looking after himself right now? Trying to escape?  
What was this little weakling worth to him?

He shook his head and ran on.

He collided with another Saiyan who was running in the other direction as he ran. He recognized him as Bardock, a well-known low-ranker who had become an elite due to many successful missions.

"Out of my way!"  
The other Saiyan growled with anger and determination as he shoved Kabij aside.

Kabij normally would not have taken this sort of attitude lightly from another Saiyan, but time was not something he had at the moment.  
He turned the corner into the baby ward and there he saw him.

His new-born son.

The child was technically motherless, as the overwhelming majority of Saiyan sexual interaction was casual and instinctive.  
Kabij didn't even remember the girl's name.  
All he knew was that this little weakling was his only relative, the only bearer of his blood.

He had to protect him.

He took the baby in his arms and ran out into the back of the hospital, where the baby pods were located.  
They were for the weakest of new-borns, the ones not fit to become Saiyan warriors. They were sent away to other planets so that they would hopefully annihilate the population there and be retrieved later in life.

He would send his son away, somewhere where Freeza would never find him.

Kabij found an empty pod and almost threw his son in it in hurry.  
There was no time to work out where he was sending him, so he quickly strapped him in and gave the co-ordinated destination panel a good slap.

The small pod began to beep and inside he could see robotic arms moving around inside to inject the baby with all sorts of cryogenic chemicals.

It began to hover a few inches off the ground, and then, suddenly, it blasted off into the air in a flash of white light.

Kabij just realised that his son didn't have a name yet.  
And then it came to him.

"Goodbye, Eleryc, my son." he said as a small smile came to his face.  
"I hope we meet again someday."

And as he watched the tiny pod become a mere sparkle in the thick red sky,

the ground below him began to crumble in a trickle of orange light.

* * *

 _The baby stopped crying._

 _It had cried for at least an hour, but it was tired; no-one was there to help it._

 _No one could hear him._

 _No one cared._

 _And just as the tears in his eyes began to dry up, they began to glow.  
They had been struck by rays of green light which had soon illuminated the pod in its entirety._

 _In front of it was a bright green halo of energy, seemingly hovering in space._

 _Its center was darker than the void that surrounded it, and through it no stars could be seen._

 _As the pod approached, it began to speed up, as though being pulled towards it.  
_ _The light and the sudden speed frightened the child, who whimpered in fear.  
_ _The green energy quickly became a blaze of blinding light, the closer the pod came to it._

 _Suddenly, acceleration stopped.  
As did the light._

 _ **This** void seemed... different.  
For the world on the other side of the ring was a world of its own._

 _The specks of light that were stars were now far smaller in number, and through the glass pane,  
a small blue-and-green sphere covered in wispy white streaks could be seen in the distance._

 _And the baby's pod was moving closer and closer to it._

* * *

 ***gasps*. Lol jk, anyway I hope you liked that little special chapter, (DBZ crossover's gotta relate to the DBZ universe at some point, amirite?)  
**

 **If you liked it don't forget to fave, follow and review!**


	11. Chapter 11 - Invasion

**Hey again! Sorry for not posting a new chapter for so long, I had lots off stuff going on and I kept telling myself that I would sit down and write, so here it is! The 11th chapter.  
** **Don't forget to follow, fave and review!**

* * *

" _ **Kasai no Ryôkugan**_!"

Ikidori uttered the words as his green eyes flashed brightly for a moment. He squinted slightly and a wave of acid-green fire spread out and filled his entire field of vision.

The verdant inferno struck the masked men that stood in front of him, and they immediately seized up in a fit of irreversible paralysis.  
A few had their blackened arms raised, with shuriken and kunai ready to be thrown, and when the green flames hit them, their muscles tensed suddenly and they fell to the floor, their edges of their weapons sinking into their flesh of their palms.

Ikidori jumped off the roof of the shop and landed in the middle of the alley below. He could hear the sound of clashing swords and kunai echoing through the streets, and cries of pain and death rang out into the sky.

He immediately began sprinting towards the opening onto the street and skidded to a halt, his sandals throwing up a cloud of dust.

A furious battle was raging between a multitude of masked men and a band of Leaf shinobi. The Leaf were outnumbered; many civilians had joined in the fight but had fallen all too quickly.  
Blood was spattered on the walls and windows were smashed, mothers hurried away with their crying children and throwing weapons of all sorts ricocheted off the walls.

Suddenly, Ikidori realised.

The men masked in black… he had seen them before.

They wore the same attire as the ones that had attacked him and his son while they were taking a detour through the forest, to get to the Hidden Leaf.  
Then he understood.  
Those were not bandits at all, but were part of some sort of army. Ikidori now realised that they had stumbled upon one of many patrols of these warriors, who may have been camped outside of the village, waiting for the order to strike.

If only he had known.

He would have prevented all this from happening had he reported a possible _invasion_ to the authorities, instead of a mere concern about bandits.

He readied himself for combat, and as he advanced, he wondered what he was going to say to his son.

He didn't want to believe it, but the boy was practically a monster; Ikidori had seen him turn into that enormous, horrendous ape-creature to fight the similarly sized sand demon.

He had fleetingly seen the boundless fury of in his demonic red eyes.

He knew that deep inside Kudo lay a ferocity that was unmatched by any earthly power. Ikidori may not have been able to sense it's chakra, but he was never doubtful of its existence.  
Kudo had immeasurable potential for destruction, and he had always known that some day, this potential would be realised.

 _He_ was the one who had found this… **_being_** , all those years ago.

His son wasn't really his.  
He wasn't like him.  
He wasn't like anyone.

And for a moment, Ikidori wondered if he should even call him "son" at all.

* * *

Kudo screamed.

The fighting paused for a second as everyone turned.  
An aura of blue light was bellowing from him, and a gust of air pushed rocks away and caused the trees to shake.

Kudo stopped abruptly and crouched into a fighting stance, his muscles bulging and a wispy layer of pale blue energy covering his skin.

This looked like an invasion to him. The non-leaf villagers were masked and fighting the Leaf shinobi furiously, and in the distance he could hear women and children shouting and crying.

"It must've happened while I was out," he thought, frustrated. "That whole situation with that sand monster probably had something to do with it, too.  
What about Dad?  
Ten-ten and the others? I've got to make sure they're all right.  
If anyone can stop these guys, it's me.  
I'm sure of it now."

Kudo disappeared.

Just as everyone returned to battle a few confused seconds later, he reappeared in front of one of the masked sound shinobi,  
with his fist drawn below his belt.

He let loose an almighty front jab, which shattered the man's face and caused his head to fly backwards.  
The thud was impossibly loud, as was the cracking sound as his neck snapped down the middle.

Just before the falling mask-bearer had touched the ground, Kudo lashed around and disappeared once more.

He moved at unbelievable speed, so fast that no eyes could detect him.  
Once again, mere fractions of a second later, he reappeared in a burst of blue with his hands raised and blasted another masked shinobi with a beam of yellow energy, sending him flying off into the trees.

The fighting had mostly stopped here now. The Leaf shinobi guards had backed off a little to give Kudo some space.

One by one, the masked shinobi fell to the hyper-speed attacks of the seemingly ghostly Hidden Soul genin.

* * *

" _ **Hurry up, Shikamaru!**_ "

Naruto cried out as he leaped through the trees. He had to reach Sasuke and Sakura in time, otherwise they might both die at the hands of Gaara.  
It had all gone to shit.  
The invasion of the Hidden Leaf had put everyone's lives in danger, and Naruto was having none of it.

But he had seen Gaara in his match against Kudo.

He had turned into that enormous beast, the one-tailed sand demon.  
So he was a jinchuuriki too, a tailed-beast bearer, just like Naruto himself.

But Naruto had only just begun to tap into his own tailed beast's chakra, so how could he possibly win this one?

He jumped from one more branch, and as he sailed past the trees, he saw a half-transformed Gaara speeding towards a helpless Sasuke right in front of him. He readied a powerful kick.  
He would protect his friends at all costs.

He would need to use all the tricks and strategies he knew, and hopefully,  
just hopefully,

Luck would be on his side.

* * *

 **Hope you enjoyed that!  
** **More chapters will be out soon, I can assure you!  
** **Until next time!**


	12. Chapter 12 - Eyes of Purest Blood

**Back with another chapter, going to be a bit longer this time.  
Enjoy! Don't forget to fave, follow and review if you want to see more!**

* * *

 _Orochimaru has retreated from the fight, escorted away by some of his corrupted Hidden Sound shinobi. Almost all of the other sound and sand shinobi have fled, outmatched by the Leaf warriors' superior skills._

 _The 3rd Hokage has fallen to Orochimaru's blade._

Kudo walked slowly away from the site of the massacre.  
Masked men lay about the path, their faces bloodied, their bones broken…

 _And their lives taken._

He was a ninja.  
He was just doing his job.  
But…

He had enjoyed it.  
 ** _A lot._**  
Should he have? He didn't know.

"You've got some serious skills, kid." One of the Leaf guards said to Kudo in awe as he walked past them, back into the village.

"Tell that to my father." Kudo replied sarcastically, and a wry grin crept across his face.

He broke into a sprint.

* * *

Houses and shops flew by.  
As he approached a corner, someone came out.

He had to skid so as not to crash into them.

As the dust cleared, he saw his father standing in front of him.

"Dad, before you ask, I'm OK, I was-"  
"Son. I always knew you were safe. But... that's not what I need to tell you.  
I might as well tell you now..."

"Yeah?"

"Y-You... You're not who you think you are."

"What, that's the big news? You've got to be kidding me, right?  
I mean, come on."

"Well... you, see, Kudo... you're..."

"What?"

"Nothing. Forget it."

 _Kudo wasn't really sure he wanted to know anyway._

He took a step forwards, closed his eyes and hugged his father, something he rarely ever did.

Ikidori returned the hug,  
But his eyes remained open.

* * *

 ** _One week later:_**

 _The Leaf Village mourns the loss of the 3rd Hokage, and after his funeral, the inhabitants sorrowfully return to their daily lives._

* * *

Kudo walked with her.  
His hands were awkwardly sandwiched into his pockets as he strolled along the waterfront, and she had her arms folded and her head facing the floor.

The trees beside them rustled in the breeze and small ripples fanned from lilipads on the sky-blue water.

"He meant so much to all of us." Ten-ten said softly. "He was like a father to everyone, you know?"

Kudo cracked his knuckles. "I-I understand." He whispered. "It's sad that he just... passed away so suddenly."

Ten-ten folded her arms tighter. She sounded like she was on the brink of sobbing.  
"B-But... he didn't... die in vain though, right?"

"It was as honorable as it gets, Ten-ten." Kudo reassured her.  
Kudo clenched his fist. He knew, inside, that he could have helped. He was just starting to have some confidence in his seemingly immense strength. If somehow he had just... known that he was in trouble he could have done something.  
The hindsight angered him.

Suddenly, Ten-ten began to cry. Tears rolled slowly down her cheeks and she whimpered.  
Unexpectedly, she put her arms around Kudo and cried into his shoulder.

Kudo, taken aback, awkwardly put his arms around her.

"Don't worry. You'll... get over it sooner or later."

* * *

His eyes narrowed.

In the distance, he could see two figures walking side by side. One was dressed what looked like a long, black kimono, and the other wore a red-and-black shinobi jacket. Both appeared to be teenagers.

"Itachi, you seein' this?" A gruff voiced, grey-skinned and fish-like man asked from beside him.

"As clear as day, Kisame." he replied. He straightened his long black sleeves and focused on the two figures intensely. Suddenly, his pitch-black eyes began to crack with streaks of red, and soon filled his whole iris with a blood-coloured glow.  
A black circle with three black teardrop shapes stuck to it began to form around his pupil.

"Should I deal with this?" The one called Kisame asked with a sharp, toothy grin on his face.

"No, I think I'll exert myself a bit. You've been doing too much of the work lately." Itachi said as his eyes opened wide behind his floppy black hair.

"You think this is _work_ , Itachi?"  
Kisame asked with a snort.

" ** _This is child's play._** "

* * *

After what seemed like an eternity, Ten-ten stopped hugging him.

She looked up at him with her reddened eyes and a small smile crept across her mouth.  
"Thanks, Kudo. You're a good guy, you know that?"  
"Well, I try my best." he answered her modestly and he ran a hand through his hair.

"Hey... why don't you come to my-" Ten-ten began to say as Kudo suddenly jerked around.

There was a clang of metal against metal.  
Kudo's hand was outstretched, and in his palm was a kunai knife.  
He had just deflected another one that had been sailing right towards her.

"Stay alert!" Kudo whispered to her sharply. "They could be anywhere!"

Kudo heard the sound of approaching feet behind him.  
He lashed around.

He saw three familiar figures approaching: Kurenai, Kakashi and Asuma, who were all team coaches at the Leaf's Ninja Academy.  
Kakashi shouted to him. "Watch out! _Behind you!_ "

Kudo turned around once again.

* * *

Itachi was sprinting towards the teenager.

He leaped into the air, his long black cloak flapping in the wind as he descended towards the target with his leg outstretched. The boy's eyes widened in surprise.

And then he was gone.

"Itachi" landed and skidded in the dirt. And disappeared in a puff of smoke.

He had just seen his shadow clone miss the kick. The teenager had just... vanished. A feeble illusion jutsu. That was all.  
Itachi focused his Sharigan-bearing eyes to seek out the young shinobi.

And yet he found nothing. There was no jutsu to detect. Nothing to copy. That wasn't possible. The Sharingan saw all. No jutsu could get past it... _especially not **his.**_

Suddenly, the spiky-haired shinobi reappeared, only a few paces in front of Itachi.

"What do you want?!" he growled, his sharp black eyes narrowing as he bared his teeth like an animal.

"That doesn't concern you, boy. Now do yourself a favour and get out of my sight."

"After what you just tried? _No way._ And hey, why should I get out of your sight...  
 **when I can just get rid of it?** "

"What do-" Itachi started.

The boy disappeared again.  
He was beginning to annoy him.

All of a sudden, Itachi's vision flooded with light. Blinding light. It was so sudden and so bright that he was forced to shut his eyes and he took a step backwards.

* * *

Kudo stepped in close, crouched and drew back his fist.

He let loose an almighty uppercut to the man's stomach. He could feel his insides shudder around his fist.  
The man flew up into the air, and Kudo followed suit with a giant leap.

Just as he reached the pinnacle of the jump, he brought down his elbow on the robed man's back. The man shot down to the ground and crashed in an eruption of dirt and dust.

The dust cleared and he lay still.

Kakashi and the others had arrived.

"Takibi!" Kakashi shouted to Kudo. "Stay away from him! He's more dangerous than you think!"

"But I've already won, look." Kudo replied confidently as he turned to point at the man's broken body. And as he did, it disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"He's still here!" Asuma muttered loudly as he spat out a cigarette. "It's a shadow clone!"

"Don't underestimate him. He's got too many tricks up his sleeve for us to be relaxed in this situation, kid." The beautiful red-eyed kunoichi known as Kurenai explained to him.

* * *

"You got him good there, Itachi." Kisame chuckled.

Itachi zipped to his side.

"I was just testing his strength. Seems like he's got the advantage of brute force, but he doesn't have the brains to match the brawn."

"You still don't want my help?" Kisame asked expectantly.

"You occupy yourself with the others.  
 _This brat is mine for the taking._ "

* * *

Kudo looked up to see two figures approaching slowly.

Both were dressed in black robes that flowed down their bodies, and small red clouds outlined with white were dotted over their garments.

One was a tall, grey-skinned man with a face like a shark, who had a huge pillar-like object wrapped in cloth slung over his shoulder.  
The other was the same as the shadow clones he had been fighting; a man of average height, with floppy black hair and red eyes. His face seemed... familiar. Kudo couldn't quite place it... it was like he resembled someone he knew.

He hadn't realised it when he was fighting him earlier, but the closer the man came, he noticed the patterns in his eyes.  
The Sharingan.  
So this guy was related to Sasuke? That explained the look.

The two men stopped in front of the five of them.

Kurenai turned to Ten-ten. "Ten-ten, go back to the village and warn the Hokage about these two immediately. We can hold them off, but you need to hurry."  
"Sure thing." Ten-ten said, and she turned and leaped into the trees to the side.

Kakashi was at the front of the group.

"So... Itachi Uchiha. The guy who murdered his entire clan and still comes back for more." He muttered from behind his mask with a frown. "And I see you've got a new get-up. Akatsuki, eh? Well, what else did I expect..."

A wave of realisation swept over Kudo. _This_ was the Uchiha murderer, Itachi, who was also Sasuke's brother. Sasuke had said his parents had been murdered right in front of him.  
Kudo's face darkened with shock and pity for Sasuke.  
This man, this... **_bastard_** had done all that, and now he was so nonchalant? So smug and calm?

He couldn't even begin to imagine what Sasuke must have gone through.

Asuma lit another cigarette, put it in the side of his mouth and elaborately slipped on a pair of shiny black knuckledusters.  
"So, what's your first move, **you son of a bitch?!** " he spat.

Itachi slowly brought a hand to his face and brushed his floppy hair out of his eyes.  
The blood-red orbs narrowed.

And he uttered the dreaded words.

* * *

 _ **"Mangeky**_ _ **ô**_ _ **Sharingan."**_

* * *

 **Hope you all enjoyed that! I know it's been a while but ya know some stuff in life's just got to take presidence above writing fanfics! (Also I've sort of been juggling this story with another one, therefore rendering my statement invalid... ahh forget it.)**

 **Anyway, fave, follow and review ppl! I'd appreciate it.**

 **P.s: Check out my Halo-Destiny videogame crossover if you're a fan of the franchises.**


	13. Chapter 13 - Not on the Menu

**Hey!**

 **Welcome, friends, to the 13th chapter.  
** **That is all.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

 _ **"Don't look into his-"**_

* * *

He froze.

The clouds parted and fled from the skies. The blue sheet of midday hardened and cracked, spilling down brick-red blood from the heavens and smearing it over the horizon.  
The trees of the forest were torn from their roots by an invisible gust of ungodly wind, and the murky lake water evaporated as though it had brushed against the scorching heat of the sun's surface.

The voice faded and died as all sound ceased to reach his ears.  
Soon he was standing in a void of crimson, and in the distance, there stood a single, ghostly silhouette that looked like it was made of liquid silver.

Kudo felt like he weighed a million tons.  
He could barely hold up his eyelids, and his arms drooped by his sides. His jaw slacked and his head lolled onto his chest, but somehow his legs were still managing to hold him up.

 _"You probably have the weakest mind I've ever been inside, 'shinobi'. That's an achievement."_

The voice was close by.  
Kudo forced his head up and tried to take a step forwards. His feet wouldn't budge.

 _"There isn't any point in struggling. The genjutsu of my Mangekyo Sharingan is irresistible, especially to a ninja as unusual as yourself."_ The voice was loud and harsh but had a subtle softness to it.

"What do you mean, **_unusual?_** " Kudo spat with some difficulty.

 _"Well, for starters, you don't have any chakra, and yet you can manipulate some sort of internal life force that I'm ashamed to say I don't recognise. And without any chakra, you can't defend against my genjutsu. It wouldn't be a far cry to say that you probably can't defend against any sort of genjutsu."_

"I don't need chakra. I'm powerful enough already." Kudo growled.

 _"You may have trained your body on the outside, boy, but you forgot to train yourself on the inside."_ The ghost hissed. _"But then again, no amount of training could have prepared you."_

Kudo gave a pained look of confusion. "Prepared me for what?!" he demanded.

 _ **"This."**_

Kudo's eyes widened. A pulse of searing pain ran up the sides of his neck and to his temples. White hot knives, being driven into his head. He didn't scream. He didn't flinch. He couldn't.  
The pain stabbed through his skull, pulsating at the backs of his eyeballs and he raged silently inside.

 _"This is your mind. In here, I can slow time down to whatever speed I want. You could spend 3 days in here and it would only be worth a minute on the outside."_

The ghostly figure of Itachi Uchiha began to walk towards him.

* * *

Kakashi took a deep breath.

He tried to assess the situation.  
Kurenai and Asuma were a few paces behind him, their eyes clamped shut and their weapons raised.

He slowly opened his blood-red eye, expecting the worst.

Itachi was standing directly opposite the Hidden Soul kid, his eyes blank and unfocused. Neither of them moved, only their long black hair rustled in the wind and they stood in complete silence.  
Then Kakashi realised.  
Kudo was enslaved to Itachi's Sharingan. They both appeared to be in some sort of trance, which he presumed Itachi was in control of. There was no telling when he would snap out of it... and what he was doing to Kudo inside his own head.

Kakashi opened his other eye cautiously.  
Nothing happened. So, it seemed that Itachi's Sharingan could only focus on one person at a time.  
"Kurenai, Asuma! You can open your eyes!" he called to his comrades.  
"What's going on, Kakashi?" Kurenai asked. "Why is the boy just standing there?"

"He's under the influence of the Mangekyo Sharingan." Kakashi replied.  
"We should attack Itachi while he's occupied. He won't see it coming." Asuma muttered.  
"That's what I was thinking." Kakashi confirmed his comrade's suggestion. "But stay alert, he could snap out of it at any time."

Kakashi stood up tall and started to make a hand-sign.

 _ **"We'll be having none of that!"**_ a growling voice without a face shouted jokingly.  
Kisame leaped from the trees in a burst of leaves and cloth, brandishing his huge weapon that was unraveling in mid-air.  
He skidded to a halt in front of the three shinobi.

"Well, well, well, I didn't think any of you three had the nerve to stab someone in the back while they're busy." He rasped with his permanent, toothy grin. "And _surely_ three honorable ninja of the Hidden Leaf wouldn't be so **cowardly** as to gang up on one, helpless opponent such as myself?"

Kakashi frowned and adopted crouched fighting stance.

"Oh wait! I forgot! I'm not helpless!" Kisame hissed as he ran his grey hand over the huge, spiked and scale-covered longsword. "My little baby Samehada is all the help I need."  
He spun the gargantuan sword by the hilt and the remainder of the cloth that protected it from wear fluttered down onto the ground.

* * *

Kudo fell to his knees.

The clouds began to regroup up above him, and the blood that filled the skies faded to reveal the familiar blue. The trees sank back into the ground and blue-green water poured down into the empty lake. His assailant stood perfectly still in front of him, still staring him down with a look of suppressed hatred and lust for his pain.

Kudo was sweating like a pig, and his vision was blurry. He felt like a leaf in the wind, like he could be blown away by the slightest gust of midday air, or shattered like pane of thin glass.

"You'll be glad to know that your body is only a minute older than it was _before_ we had our little gathering." Itachi rasped. "But your _mind_... that's been stewing in there for **just** a tad longer than that."

" _Uhhh... uhhhh..._ " Kudo groaned. "I... I'm not... _uhh..._ d-d-done...y-yet..."  
He fell forwards, only just catching himself with an outstreched hand on the dusty ground.  
He rose up too quickly and blood rushed to his head, further clouding his vision.

* * *

Kisame brought Samehada crashing down.

Kakashi whipped out two kunai with each arm and crossed them above his head. The fish-like longsword clanged onto the intersecting blades, but instead of rebounding like Kakashi had expected, it locked into place.  
Kakashi pushed upwards with all his might, but Kisame would not budge.

Asuma unleashed a barrage of shuriken and disappeared from sight. Kisame raised a hand and caught them one by one, in quick succession.  
Kakashi took this opportunity. He heaved upwards and managed to push Samehada up a notch, causing Kisame to stumble backwards slightly.

It wasn't going to be easy. If he tried to move backwards, the shark-blade would come slicing down faster than he could get away. He would have to keep pushing.  
With a grunt of effort, he began to channel his chakra to his arms and they began to spark with crackles of visible purple lightning.  
It would be weaker than usual, because he didn't exactly have much space to do the proper hand-signs, but it would be just enough to get free.

Kakashi bared his teeth behind his balaclava.

* * *

 ** _"CHIDORI!"_**

* * *

His silver hair stood on end as two million volts of electricity surged through his hands and branched out in a spectacular display of crackling light. The current rushed through the conductive kunai and he pushed himself forwards.

Instead of causing Kisame to topple over, though, the lighting just kept pumping out, and Samehada was starting to glow. Kakashi gasped as he realised what was happening.  
The sword was absorbing his chakra. No, it was eating it, using it as fuel. The blade began to grow heavier above him, and the scales started to splay out and extend.

Two stray spikes of fish-skin sank painfully into his forearms and he cried out in pain.  
"What's wrong? D'you find out about Same's special ability?" Kisame chuckled. "Oh, she _ **is**_ a beauty."  
Kisame grunted with effort as he began to lift the slowly-growing blade. Kakashi screamed in agony as he was lifted slowly off the floor by the spikes that were embedded deep in his arms.

Asuma reappeared, his knuckledusters slipped on and his arms pulled back. He flew towards his target from behind, ready to strike.

"Hey, you ugly son of a bitch!" Kurenai shouted at the still grinning Kisame. Kisame looked up and his smile turned into a frown.

"Who are _**you**_ calling ugly?"  
He realised his mistake when he saw that the beautiful kunoichi had her hands contorted into a complex hand-sign and her eyes were full of determination.  
Kisame's vision turned completely blank in an instant. In that second of confusion, he felt a sharp thud of metal crack against the back of his skull.  
Asuma followed up with a back-heeled strike to the back of the shark-man's neck, causing him to fall forwards.

Kisame growled and scuttled away so fast that only a trail of dust was left behind.  
Kakashi was yanked along with him and the scales ripped out of his arms in a splatter of blood. He rolled forwards a few times before collapsing onto the ground, unconscious.

* * *

Itachi drew a short blade from his cloak.

"You challenged me without thinking, kid. This is last time you'll ever make that mistake."  
" _Uhh..._ Well... you haven't seen what I'm capable of yet." Kudo muttered.

"Believe me, boy, I've heard that line a million times before." Itachi rasped.  
"That's... _uhh..._ because... you've tried to kill so many... people, already... even your own clan! You're... a sick... _**bastard!**_ "

"Believe me, we're not so different." Itachi hissed. "While I was inside your head... I noticed something about you. Something inside you is suppressed, something you shouldn't have tried to suppress up until now. It's hard to explain... it's the key to unlocking your potential. You're not as righteous as you think you are, boy."

"Enough... of your ** _bullshit!_** " Kudo shouted, feeling slightly less hazy.  
"You're as much of a 'bastard' as I am. I might as well stop you now, because I can tell for a fact, that in your lifetime... _you're going to kill a lot more people than I ever will._ "

Kudo let loose an almighty scream that rang out into the forest.  
The ground shook beneath him and the water began to ripple. A cascade of blue energy burst from his entire body and illuminated the ground below, and Itachi began to walk forwards.  
Kudo stopped screaming. He drew his right hand back and clenched his other fist tightly. In his open palm, a perfect sphere of blue-green, flickering light was steadily growing larger and larger.

The 'whoosh' of his aura was deafening.  
"Itachi! Don't challenge it!" Kisame called hoarsely to his ally as he approached. "I've got this covered!"  
The shark-man threw himself between them and swung Samehada over his head a few times. He steadily crossed it along the length of his body, with both hands on the hilt.

"Give her your best shot, spiky." Kisame jeered. " _She's hungry for your chakra!_ "

Kudo's energy ball was now unstable, fluctuating under the sheer force it was creating.  
He took a resolute step forward.

* * *

 ** _"Well why don't you tell her..._**

* * *

Kudo thrust his energy-wielding hand towards his scaly opponent.

* * *

 _ **...That chakra's not on the menu!"**_

* * *

The ball of energy contorted itself into a thin beam of teal-tinted light.  
The brilliant ray shot forwards at an alarming speed and collided with the flat side of the longsword and began pumping heaps energy into it.  
Too much energy.  
Far too much.

Kisame's eyes widened in shock as his sword suddenly expanded in all directions, the spikes crashing into the dirt and extending for yards into the air. It soon weighed so much that he had to drop it, and he and Itachi were dashing away from hundreds of lethal spikes.

One huge needle of scale caught Itachi's hand and sliced the flesh.

 _"Lets get **out** of here!"_ he shouted to Kisame.  
But Kisame was already gone.

Itachi turned around and leaped into the trees.

* * *

 _ **Whaaat?**_

 **Sorry to my expectant followers for delaying this chapter for so long, but I was reallllly busy with IRL stuff so again, I'm sorry. But I put in quite a bit of effort into this one so ya know... cut me some slack.**

 **Remember to fave, follow and review if you want to see more!**


	14. Chapter 14 - Demons and Cherubs

**Hey again readers!**

 **So, so sorry for not updating for a while, but I've had such a busy time with school and a severe case of writer's block, so again, sorry about that!  
However, I can assure you that interesting developments will be made.**

 **Remember to fave, follow and review if you wanna see more!**

* * *

Candles on long wax sticks were flickering in the dark atrium, the orange glow flaring up on the walls like crashing waves. A polished, marble-encrusted serpent sat curled and unmoving in a tall glass jar.  
A sliver of light opened up in the near-darkness. A man with long, tied-back silver hair stood in the opening, with another figure slung over both his shoulders.  
The silver-haired man trundled into the dark, towards a spiky throne made out of charred stone in the middle of the room.  
With a grunt, he gently flopped the figure off his shoulders and settled him neatly on the throne, sitting upwards.  
The silver-haired man took a step backward, and his blue-purple shinobi jacket and overalls came into view.  
The warm glow lit up his face, and above his pair of jet-black eyes sat a headband with a single musical note carved into it.  
The Hidden Sound Village.

"K-Kabuto…" the figure rasped. "Sarutobi… that _bastard_ …"

"You didn't think it would be easy, did you? Look who you were up against." Kabuto remarked. "One of the most renowned shinobi in all the five elemental nations. You did very well though, now two of the five are-"

 ** _"_** ** _Shut your mouth!"  
_** The figure leaned forwards suddenly and his face came into view. Black strands of hair hung over his yellowish eyes and droopy, purple eyelids. Kabuto gasped in surprise at his master's anger.  
"I will **_not_** be patronised, _understand?!_ I'll kill you."

Kabuto quickly regained his composure. "I apologise, it's just that I…" He trailed off at the sight of Orochimaru's snake-like tongue folding behind his inhumanly sharp teeth.  
"The jinchuuriki will fall to me. It is inevitable." Orochimaru hissed.  
"We've located the Nine and One-Tails, but…" Kabuto began, "That other beast… could it be that there are more one-tailed beasts?"  
"I remember," Orochimaru whispered, "that ape-demon… he must be sealed inside that kid who was fighting that little brat, Gaara. He will have to go down as well. These pests…  
Their world will burn with the very power that was bestowed upon them.

 _ **But only once I get these useless arms back!"**_

* * *

Kudo would get stronger.

Stronger than he thought was possible. Strong enough to crush his enemies.  
He would start with his body… even though he was pretty much stronger than everyone else he had come up against, a little bit more strength wouldn't hurt, would it?  
And besides, that wasn't what he needed to focus on. His mind was the problem.

He had the potential, he could feel it somewhere at the core of his being. Obviously, with no chakra at hand, his mind had a pretty weak defense against Genjutsu. He wouldn't be able to rely on his strength alone for every battle.  
But that was for later.

Kudo outstretched his hands and bent his legs into a fighting stance. He was standing on a small, wooden pier out into a huge, still lake. Breath hissed out of his nose and the corners of his mouth, and ripples began to spread out onto the water.  
The familiar sensation of something being pushed from the center of his body enveloped him, and his hands began to vibrate, a soft humming sound emanating from his palms.

Slowly, about an inch from his hands, two spheres of growing, solid yellow light came into being.  
He had decided that, in true shinobi fashion, he would also name his techniques. His type of energy didn't fit into any of the elemental or sub-elemental types of chakra, so he had resolved to create his own.

 ** _"_** ** _Sun Style: Celestial Annihilation!"_** he uttered as the spheres of light shot into the distance, throwing up a huge wave on the lake as they whizzed by.  
After a few seconds, Kudo stood upright, and clapped his hands together. The spheres immediately swerved towards each other.

 ** _BOOM!_**

The two blasts of spiritual power became one, and expanded rapidly. Giant arcs of lighting branched out from the center, and the water on the lake roared into the air, away from the huge ball of energy, which was now at least a hundred yards in diameter.  
Kudo grinned to himself, but then quickly brought up an arm to shield his eyes from the intense light. A gust of vehement wind blew past him and he stumbled.  
Kudo whipped around as the waves of water crashed back onto the lake.

This was just the beginning.

* * *

Naruto would get stronger.

Strong enough to protect his friends, to fight for his village… to prove to everyone that he wasn't just some sort of miscreant, knuckle-headed small-fry!  
Jiraiya was an old pervert, but so what? He was the best chance Naruto had to accomplish what he had been hoping for his whole life.  
The Rasengan was an immensely powerful attack, and the Shadow Clone Justu was immeasurably useful in battle, but he needed to expand his arsenal. It was no use trying to use the same moves over and over.  
He had just began to tap into the Nine-Tails' chakra, so he needed to master it in order to surpass even his toughest foes. That guy… the one who killed the Hokage. He was going to pay.

Naruto tightened his headband.

All of them. They were going to suffer. And at long last, the Hidden Leaf Village would acknowledge him as their savior.  
And with that courageous and noble spirit coursing through his veins, he set off into the street to fetch some dirty magazines for his Sensei.

* * *

Kudo walked slowly through the middle of town, Ten-ten's hand in his.

The night was black, with only a few stars dotted across the sky. There was a cool breeze winding through the streets, but Kudo was sweating anyway. If you had asked him, he probably would have said it was because he had been training for the past day.  
But that wasn't true. He hadn't broken a sweat at any point during his training.  
And he knew the real reason.

"You sure have been training hard, Kudo." Ten-ten whispered. "You should spar with me sometime."

"Well... I guess we could. You sure you could take me?" Kudo replied with arrogance.

"Sure." Ten-ten smiled and bit her lip.

Kudo saw this and held onto her a bit tighter.  
Ten-ten shivered and hugged his arm. With one of her fingers, she gently traced out the ripples in his right bicep. Kudo tensed up awkwardly and looked down at her. She was staring up at him with her big, brown eyes.  
Kudo's sharp black eyes softened, and a gust of wind rustled his hair.

They both stopped.

"Ten-ten..."  
"K-Kudo..."

Ten-ten stood up slowly on the tips of her toes and closed her eyes.  
Kudo's heart raced.  
A fire was burning inside of him, but it wasn't rage, and it wasn't fear... it was something else.

He leaned in and felt his lips touch hers.

* * *

 _ **At Roughly The Same Time, Many Universes Away**_

* * *

" **KAAAA…** " Goku's fist began to shake as he dragged his arm to his side.

" **MEEEE…** " Blue ki enveloped his hand and began to hum.

" **HAAAA…** " He opened his palm and pointed it at the ground.

" **MEEEE…** " His spikey black hair rustled in the wind that was bellowing from his side.

He paused and looked up suddenly, and in a split second, he gauged the exact amount of power he would need.

" **HAAAAAAAAAA!** " he screamed at the top of his lungs. He was immediately lifted off his feet, his charged-up fist whistling with the sound of raw, pure ki, shaking clenched by his side.

King Piccolo realised his fate at the last second. He stretched out his arms in a defensive stance, as the boy soared toward him from below.  
Goku powered on through.

 _Crunch!_

Goku slipped past the outstretched palms of evil and his fist connected with the dark green skin of the Demon King's solar plexus. With a thrust, Goku felt himself jolt forward, and his tiny body passed through a mess of purple blood and water, to the other side. Piccolo choked as his life's royal elixir spurted from his mouth and gaping chest.  
No! There was still a way he could win!  
"Go, my future son! Show these weaklings what it is to feel suffering!" he thought to himself as he forced a large white object up what was left of his oesophagus.

He jerked his head to the side and spat with all his might. The egg shot off into the distance.

Tien Shinhan's third eye caught the object travelling away. "Oh no you don't!" he muttered as he raised a finger to the projectile. _"Dodon... **Ray!"  
**_ The high-pressure beam of ki soared through the air and struck the dirty white egg from the bottom. Its path changed suddenly, and it flew up into the sky like a rocket, the yellow trail of Tien's blast following close behind, until it was just a speck in the sky. It whizzed past the clouds, then the boundary of the sky itself, into darker and darker space until it was free from the throes of Earth's gravity.

King Piccolo gasped in desperation and defeat as he began the long fall to the ground, not aware that Tien's actions would be the best thing that ever happened to his son.  
The Demon King's Reign was not destined for _this_ Earth...

But for another.

* * *

 **Hope you enjoyed that!**

 **I have serious exam revision to do, but I'll get the chapter up when I can find time to write.  
Until then...**

 **Fave, follow and review if you want to see more!**


	15. Chapter 15 - Mind over Matter (Part 1)

**Get ready, folks! Serious s*** is about to go down.**

* * *

 _"_ _I will heal your arms… but in exchange… you keep your hands off the village."_

 _The pale-faced man began to stroll towards her with his arms outstretched. He licked his lips with his reptilian tongue and chuckled maliciously to himself._

 _"_ _Very well… Tsunade."_

* * *

Ikidori woke to the sound of a door creaking open.  
He rolled off his mattress and drew a kunai from under his pillow in an instant. The curtains rustled gently next to the open window of the bedroom, and the wind howled softly through the gaps in the floorboards. The door swung open fully.

"D-Dad?"  
Kudo's mild voice reached Ikidori's ears, and he relaxed, his bright green eyes slowly peeking out from the shadows.

"Son? What do you think you're doing, coming back so late!? You need to get some rest before tomorrow." Ikidori scolded him. "We're leaving at the crack of dawn."

"Well… I've been thinking…" Kudo began to get nervous. "And… I've realized that…"

"That you don't want to go?" Ikidori finished his sentence for him.

"It's just that I-" Kudo began.

"I know how you feel, son. I know you have friends here… but we have to learn to control our feelings and let go of the people we care about sometimes."

"But _why?!_ " Kudo raised his voice. "We can't just leave these people here to die like this… we can make a difference instead of just… t-turning a blind eye!"

Ikidori sighed. "This village has too many enemies for its own good, Kudo. You and I both know that. And… and you…"

 _"_ _What?!"_ Kudo muttered, frustrated.

"Having you around won't make it any better."

"That's ridiculous! You've seen with your own eyes how strong I've become, I reckon with a few more days of training my mind'll be strong enough to-"

"That's exactly what I mean." Ikidori interrupted him as a gust of wind slammed the bedroom door into its frame. "Kudo… your level of power won't go unnoticed by the Hidden Leaf's enemies for much longer… in fact, I highly doubt they are still unaware of it… if… if that power falls into the wrong hands…"

 ** _"_** ** _NO!"_** Kudo shouted through clenched teeth. "It **won't** happen! It **_can't_** happen! I'm _stronger_ than that!"  
The wind from the outside subsided as the house started to vibrate. A small vase slipped over the edge of a table next to the mattress and shattered on the wooden floorboards. Ikidori stepped close to his son and put a hand on his trembling shoulder.

"Kudo. Calm down."

Kudo's blank eyes came into focus as he looked at his father in despair. "I… we… we can't go, Dad. We have work to finish."

Ikidori hesitated for a moment. "Son… we have to go. This village's problems are not ours to solv-"

Kudo interrupted him. "Sorry, Dad. I'm staying."

"Kudo…" Ikidori hesitated. "Fine, but you take care of yourself, and don't do anything reckless. I'm going without you. I'll tell your mother tomorrow."

He sighed with relief. "Thanks, Dad. This'll work out in the end, I know it will.  
You'll see."

* * *

 _"_ _Naruto, stay back! You're in over your head here, there's nothing you can do! Just stay away from them!"_

 _"_ _I can't do that! I said I would beat these guys, and I never go back on my-"_

 _"_ _I think you should listen to your sensei, kid. You don't know what you're getting yourself into."_

 _"_ _The way you underestimate me makes me sick, that and your ugly snake-demon-friend's face!"_

 _"_ _Isn't that just further proof of why you should have just stayed at home, kid? You haven't yet learned that jeering and insults don't determine the outcome of a battle, and besides… your insult wasn't particularly good."_

 _"_ _Grrrr! I'll show you!"_

* * *

The sun had climbed to its peak, radiating a reinvigorating energy over his body as he waved his son good bye.  
Ikidori's long brown locks flapped to the sides of his black hood as he sped off into the distance, his arms stretched out behind him and his bag of golden shuriken jangling on his belt.

They had decided that Kudo was going to stay in the Hidden Leaf for a little longer. He knew Heian would be furious when he returned, and would probably scold him for being an irresponsible father and leaving their son in danger, but he kept telling himself… Kudo **_is_** the danger. He had made good friends here and he understood his willingness to protect them… perhaps, he thought, that young Leaf girl had clouded Kudo's judgement. He clenched his fists at the thought as he turned sharply and leapt into the trees.  
Kudo would snap if anything happened to her… and then it would all be over.

Ikidori froze.

He stopped in an instant, perfectly perched on a branch. He had felt something. Something horrible… it was hard to describe.  
 _Shiryoku no Ryôkugan.  
_ He uttered the name of his incantation as his vision filled slowly with a trickle of acid-green light.

His eyes darted to the forest floor, and on the ground he could see two pairs of footprints, with gentle verdant flames rising up from their edges. Both were sandal-shaped and of similar size. Shinobi? Possibly… but something was wrong. They didn't seem to have been in a hurry.  
Ikidori's eyes narrowed as he noticed something else. Something had been dragged along the ground behind them.

Some ** _one._**

He immediately began to follow the trail of shining footsteps. He dodged left and right through the trees, keeping his eyes on the tracks at all times. The fire that lit them up was becoming stronger now, almost spewing the flames into the air for him to see.  
That meant they were close by. He burst out of the forest canopy in one swift leap, soaring above the trees. Before him, a huge field dotted with huge boulders sprawled out into the distance, and just above the horizon…

A pair of humongous beasts were battling. After closer inspection, he realized that they had riders… well, what did he expect? These creatures weren't the sort to appear naturally; they were the result of the Summoning Jutsu. One of the beasts came in the form of a huge, orange-skinned toad that wore a leather jacket, the other was a purple-scaled serpent of epic proportions. The giant snake was currently wrapped around the toad's legs, attempting to wrestle it to the ground. Something was very wrong here… a battle between summoned beasts signified a serious battle between two shinobi, but Ikidori couldn't tell who they were.  
Not even his Ryôkugan could see that far.  
He landed with a thud on the ground and sprinted around the curved boundary of the forest, making sure that he was keeping to the shadows as he went. Even though it was probably none of his business… he couldn't shake the feeling that the outcome of this fight would affect him in the grand scheme of things.

* * *

"Come on! Hit me with your best shot!"

Kudo clenched his fists and closed his eyes. His breath rattled as he tried to concentrate, focusing his thoughts, putting up an internal barrier inside the boundaries of his consciousness. His eyes snapped open and looked into hers. They soon became two whirling pools of pale blue water, contrasting with strands of her long blonde hair that tumbled around in front of her like whips in the wind.

"Mind Destruction Jutsu." She whispered the name of her ultimate Genjutsu technique.

Kudo's head felt like it was about to split in two, right down the middle. He resisted the temptation to clasp his cranium with his trembling hands, instead, closing his eyes once again and exhaling sharply. Inside his mind, he could see her face, staring at him intently. Tendrils of burning chakra tickled the edges of his brain, and he tried batting them away. He couldn't.  
She had to stop or he would go insane.

"Ss…s-stop…" he rasped.

Kudo felt the tendrils slink away and he gasped for air, stumbling backwards.

"Are you kidding me?" Ino Yamanaka tutted at Kudo's incompetence. "I mean, you lasted longer than last time, but still…"

Kudo chuckled, rubbing his head. "Don't blame me. I'm the one shinobi that doesn't have any chakra, right?"

"I guess. But what I don't get is… how can you be so freaking strong and fast if you don't have any chakra? It doesn't make any sense."

"To be honest, until I got to the Hidden Leaf I never really thought much about it."

"I think it's kind of s-…anyway, you didn't ask me to train you so we could have a chat! Let's go again."

"Okay, I'm ready."

* * *

 _"_ _Jiraiya, it seems that you've come a long way from when we were training under Hiruzen… isn't it unfortunate, then, that you'll never be able to show him how strong you've gotten?"_

 _"_ _I don't think he would be at all surprised, Orochimaru, so I'm not missing out on much. You, however… who would've guessed that_ ** _you_** _of all people would turn out to be such an evil_ ** _bastard?_** _"_

 _"_ _How rude. That kind of ill-mannered talk is certainly unexpected from one of the legendary Sannin. I guess I'll just have to teach you some manners!"_

* * *

Ikidori stepped forth from the trees.

He began to sprint forwards, toward the battling shinobi, drawing a fistful of golden shuriken from the pouch on his belt in each hand. A quick swiping motion sent them soaring through the air.  
The Ryôkugan had seen.  
And it had understood.  
The man riding the snake… he was the same one who had killed the Hidden Leaf's 3rd Hokage. That made him a target. It was not the Hidden Soul's business, but this man was a fugitive, and a heinous criminal by any village's standards… and Ikidori was not about to let him slip through the cracks once more. The barrage of spinning golden stars thudded into the purple scales of the serpent.

This wasn't intended to do any real damage… it was just a distraction.

Its pale-faced rider spun around in the direction of the attack, looking dazedly for his apparently absent assailant. Out of nowhere, a black shinobi sandal flew into his field of view. The man's eyes opened wide in surprise for a split second before his nose crunched painfully back into his face, blood spurting from his flared nostrils and dripping all over his pure white attire. He stumbled backwards and cursed his attacker.  
Ikidori disappeared into the air, soaring above the two beasts before landing some distance away, perched on a huge boulder.

"Well, well, well, who do we have here?" the reptilian rasped. "A friend of yours, perhaps, Jiraiya?"

"I don't know him, Orochimaru, but I'll take all the help I can get." The rider of the orange toad spoke to the man called Orochimaru with a tone of disgust. He had extremely long, unruly silver hair, a red-and-brown shinobi cloak and streaks of red war-paint down his cheeks.

"Of course you would… you most definitely need it."

Ikidori cleared his throat. "Am I right in thinking that _you_ are the one responsible for the death of the Hidden Leaf's Hokage?"

Orochimaru grinned, blood still seeping from his nose. "What's it to you, stranger? Is that a… Hidden Soul headband I see? My, my, my, I haven't come across too many of you in my time. I was under the assumption that the Hidden Soul lived independently from the five shinobi nations… but it seems that _you_ have taken an unusual interest in foreign affairs."  
The very sound of the man's voice made Ikidori's skin crawl. "Your business with the Leaf Village is none of my concern. I am here to stop you because _you_ are a murderer… it's a matter of principle."

"Your determination… oh, how it _**amuses**_ me." He giggled slightly before slowly licking the almost-hardened blood from his upper lip with a stomach-churning slurp.

 **"** **Enough of this!"** Jiraiya shouted. "This ends now, Orochimaru. Who you were before doesn't matter to me anymore… your time is _up!_ "

"Well then…

come get me."

* * *

 **Thanks for your support, and I'll look forward to seeing anything you have to say about the story so far!**


	16. Chapter 16 - Mind over Matter (Part 2)

**Hey guys! If you like the story so far, drop me a message and tell me where you'd like it to go next!  
 _Enjoy!_ **

* * *

Naruto bared his teeth.

The diamond of black steel soared towards him. He raised his blistered hand in an instant, stopping it mere inches from his face, and he clasped his assailant's gloved fist as hard as possible. The polished edge sliced deep into the coarse flesh of the two steadfast digits, scraping the bone. Thick, dark-red blood seeped slowly down his trembling knuckles.

Another Naruto suddenly stepped out from behind him, bearing a similar expression. One Naruto raised his free hand to the other. The clone began to move his hands at increasing speed around the open palm, and within moments, pale blue streaks were swirling rapidly. The streaks instantaneously compressed into a fist-sized sphere of fluctuating sky-coloured chaos, barely able to contain itself.  
In a puff of smoke, the other Naruto was gone.

 _ **"**_ _ **RASENGAN!"**_

* * *

Jiraiya slammed into him head-first.

The pale reptilian grunted and stumbled backwards. He spun away from his opponent, and a short, jet-black sword materialised in his hand as he slid across the purple serpent-scales. With a shriek he hurled the sword at the Toad Sage.  
Jiraiya grimaced and batted the blade away with an elegant spinning kick. It sailed into the air, and Orochimaru opened his mouth wide, his lengthy tongue lashing out towards the airborne weapon like a whip. It clasped around the hilt and retracted back to his mouth at blinding speed. Just before it arrived, his grip loosened and he caught the hardened steel between his teeth.

Ikidori reached into the pouch on his belt and drew a single, golden shuriken. He leaped from the boulder he was perched on, landing gracefully on the huge serpent's back. Jiraiya and the villainous Orochimaru were furiously striking and parrying with tremendous force in a mutual barrage of jabs, swings, and kicks, gradually moving away from Ikidori along the length of the summoned beast.  
Orochimaru gained the upper hand for a brief moment, managing to deliver a glancing blow to the Toad Sage's war-painted face. Ikidori saw his chance.

He sliced the tiny golden starlet in his hand through the air, and it shot forward at lightning speed, spinning directly towards Orochimaru's exposed back. Ikidori disappeared from sight. The reptilian turned sharply, raising a hand in expectation of the incoming projectile.  
The few hairs on the back of his neck stood up as the Hidden Soul's finest shinobi suddenly re-appeared just inches away and grabbed the still-spinning shuriken mere moments before he was able to catch it. Ikidori swiped it across the length of Orochimaru's face, but only drawing a thin spurt of blood as it nicked his brow.

Orochimaru stumbled and his legs were swept up off the purple scales beneath him as Jiraiya suddenly came in fast and low. The two men thudded back onto the snake and began to slide down the side, each struggling to maintain control over the other.

* * *

He was outmatched.

Jiraiya was as strong as ever, and the nosy Hidden Soul bastard was quickly becoming a nuisance. He was going to have to do _something_ sooner or later. Where was Kabuto? _Surely_ by now he would have dealt with Tsunade and the Uzumaki kid?  
He sped across the grass, barely missing a ground-shifting punch from Jiraiya, and he looked to the side. A short distance away, Tsunade was crouched motionless by the boy. He spotted Kabuto, unconscious, next to a huge, cratered boulder. His robes were completely ripped… and a sizeable and spiralling hole had been drilled through his stomach.  
That meant that… somehow, they had been able to defeat him.

Orochimaru snarled and turned to face his opponents.

"Not bad. _Not._ _ **Bad.**_ " He spat.

The Hidden Soul shinobi spoke up. "You're outmatched. Turn yourself over, and maybe we won't have to kill you."

Orochimaru threw his head back and cackled. "Now, _that_ was funny. Do you imbeciles at the Soul usually operate with that kind of despicably soft attitude?! It's all or nothing... anything else is stupid. You kill me or I kill you."

He stood up tall and grinned, placing his hands flat against each other as though in prayer.

 **"** **You're mine!** _ **Infernal**_ _ **Possession Jutsu!"**_

* * *

Jiraiya wailed in pain. His eyelids felt as though they were burning up, forcing him to look into the eyes of his attacker.

 **"** **Ryôkugan."**

Ikidori whispered. The internal green flames batted away the invisible, prying tongues of heat that spewed from Orochimaru's hands.

"Your bastardised Kekkei Genkai can't help you now, shinobi, I assure you." the pale criminal rasped.

Ikidori groaned with effort as he felt the ethereal wisps begin to tease the edges of his mind with scalding fire. There had to be _something_ he could do?  
He was starting to feel drowsy. If he didn't get help, then he would be done for. The Toad Sage was in the same position as him, so he wouldn't be of use. The fiery little child was also out of commission, and the kunoichi was in too much shock to even register what was going on.

In those last moments of desperation, there was only one name that came to mind.

 _ **"**_ _ **KUDO!"**_

* * *

He sat up.

He rubbed his sleepy eyes and ruffled his spiky black pelt as he walked to the open window. He felt something wiggle about in his pants. His tail! It was starting to grow back. He yawned and looked out onto the street. It was still a beautiful day; the sun had been blazing brightly since dawn.  
 _Damn,_ Ino sure packed a figurative punch… even after a few hours of sleep he still felt a bit nauseous.

Calmly climbing through the window, Kudo plummeted to street level and landed elegantly on the ground. What to do next? Ten-ten had said that she, Neji and Lee were going to be out on a mission today… and Naruto had been away training for goodness knows how long. Shikamaru was probably still asleep… was anyone else around?

With that in mind, he crouched as low as possible and pushed upwards, the warm air rushing past him as he soared towards the sky.  
He kept rising until he could see the whole village below him, and he came to a halt, forcing a small amount of invisible energy to be expelled from below him in order to stay afloat. He hadn't quite got used to flying yet… but it was something he rarely needed to do anyway.

His head snapped to the side.

He thought he had heard his name. It had been very faint, as though it had been carried on the air for a long distance.

There it was again!

He looked around frantically for the source of the call. He heard it a third time. There! Directly ahead of him, quite a bit past the thicket of tall trees, was an open field next to a long river. In the middle of the field, there was what looked like a huge, orange-skinned toad, and next to it lay an enormous purple snake.  
Summoned beasts? That meant something _seriously_ bad was happening. But who was down there that knew his name?

He shifted the direction of the invisible force below him and he sped off towards the field.

* * *

Orochimaru licked his lips.

He was almost there. A few more seconds now and Jiraiya and his new friend would be under **his** control. He concentrated harder, forcing the prongs of scorching chakra into their heads.

Both of them fell to their knees simultaneously.

"That's it… come on now… just a little. Bit. More…"

 _Whoosh!_

In an instant, both of them were gone, pushed violently to the side in a flash of light. This wasn't his doing.

"What the…"

In their place, there stood a relatively tall young man, with a red-and-black shinobi jacket and long, impossibly spiky black hair. He slowly turned and looked at straight at him with a pair of sharp, jet-black eyes.

 _Perfect._

* * *

Kudo had opened his mouth to speak.

It shut immediately. His eyes glazed over, and every hair on his body stood on end. His muscles tensed and he stood frozen to the spot. He didn't even have time to try and fight it. A wave of prying knives dug into his head and embedded themselves in his consciousness, and the scorching heat spread down the length of his body.

Suddenly, everything stopped.

He could see clearly… and he was spatially aware enough to feel his arms and legs. He felt that the wind was blowing through his hair and he could feel the grass brushing against the exposed toes of hit feet. He was still there, in his own head. Everything _seemed_ to be fine.

He took a step forward. He hadn't meant to.

He took another step forward, like a marching soldier.

And another.

And another.

His seemingly autonomous body stopped a few paces in front of the man… who, upon closer inspection, Kudo recognised as the reported murderer of the 3rd Hokage.  
He dropped to one knee.

The snake-faced man hissed softly to him.

"Hey there, kiddo.

You're probably feeling very confused, and soon you'll probably be feeling very pissed off.

But you'll learn, _eventually_ , that no matter what you do, you can't touch me.

You're mine, now.

You work for _me_.

You will do whatever I want you to do.

Oh, but don't worry, you don't have to go through the trouble of getting punished for not following my orders… because you won't be _able_ to disobey.

In other words, from now on…

 _You_ are going to be… My. _Little._ **_Bitch._**

Any questions?"

Kudo screamed a chain of despicable insults at the man, but his mouth remained clamped shut, and no sound escaped him.

 ** _"_** ** _I thought so."_**

* * *

 **Hope you guys liked that. I'm not sure how long this story is going to end up being, but I can tell you that some major events are about occur!  
See you next time!  
**


	17. Chapter 17 - Mind over Matter (Part 3)

**Enjoy and don't forget to leave a review, whatever your thoughts!**

* * *

His sandals smacked against the beaten path as he shot round a sharp bend to the right, barely able to keep his balance. Low-hanging branches whipped against his grimacing face, and he brought up his arms in an effort to spare himself the stinging pain. Fallen leaves shifted across the dirt, pushed along by the stirring air as he sped past. Ino wasn't far ahead of him, and Choji was panting away some distance behind.

"Hurry up, man, we're not gonna wait for you!" he called to his comrade, craning his neck backwards to be heard.

Ino jumped to Choji's defence. "Go easy on him, Shika. We've got all day to get there."

He sighed. "Just… don't stop again, Choj. Waiting for you to catch your breath is _such_ a drag."

He began to turn his head, and came to a halt as he smashed into Ino head-first. He groaned as they both tumbled over each other, and cloud of dust spat into the air.

"Gahhh! Why did you stop!?" Shikamaru sat up and rubbed his head. "You could've at least—"

 _"_ _Shhhh!"_ Ino stood up in a flash and held up her hand to him, her eyes darting frantically across the path ahead.

"What is it?" he whispered, puzzled.

"Get up. Someone's coming."

Shikamaru scrambled to his feet just as Choji arrived, panting and sweating like a dog.

"Hey guys… what's happen—"

 ** _"_** ** _Shhhhhh!"_** they both silenced him simultaneously.

Shikamaru heard the distinctive rustle of branches being parted.  
The three startled shinobi scuttled into the vegetation nearby, waiting silently for the wanderer to pass.  
He started to draw a single kunai extremely slowly, not wanting to make any noise.  
The rustling was getting closer.  
His index finger clasped around the ring at the end of the blade, and the steel settled on a single bead of sweat.  
It slipped from his grasp, and clattered against the exposed roots of the tree he was pressed up against.

The rustling stopped.

 _Shit._

After what seemed like eternity, a single word broke through the silence.

 ** _"_** ** _Hello?!"_**

Was that… Kudo Takibi? What the hell was he doing out here?  
Shikamaru relaxed and grinned ever so slightly. He was out on a _promenade_ with Ten-ten, wasn't he? Definitely. Those two had become more and more lovey-dovey ever since Kudo had arrived at the Hidden Leaf. He prepared to step out into the path, ready to surprise the two lovebirds.  
Shikamaru didn't act like he cared about that kind of thing, but… he was only human. For a while he had been passively interested in Ino, but that was just a matter of circumstance. But that older Sand girl, Temari… she was something else entirely.  
He shook his head violently. He was getting sidetracked. Pshhh.  
Relationships, huh?  
What. A. Drag.

"Kudo!"

He leapt onto the path.  
Kudo's Hidden Soul headband was glistening in a stray beam of sunlight that had managed to make it through the dense canopy. The reflected light shone into Shikamaru's eyes, and he couldn't quite see Kudo's face clearly. He squinted and noticed that there was no-one with him… even though he was certain he had heard someone else moving mere moments ago.

"What are you doing out here? Are you on a mission or something?"

Kudo replied after a long pause. "I… guess you could say that."

Shikamaru was confused. "What's that supposed to mean? I thought you would be with Ten-ten or your dad."

Ino and Choji had also stepped out onto the path and stood a few paces behind Shikamaru.

"Who? Ten-ten…?"

Shikamaru's already squinted eyes narrowed further. "Uhh… _yeah._ You know, your _girlfriend?!_ "

"Oh."

"Are you okay?" Choji chimed in.

"Yes, I'm… I'm fine."

Ino spoke up. "If you're on a mission, why are you alone?"

"Oh, I'm not alone, don't worry."

"And if you're not alone, then where's your support?!" Shikamaru demanded an answer, unable to keep the tone of suspicion out of his voice.

Kudo stood unmoving for a few seconds, and then slowly began to raise his arm, his index finger outstretched. The pointing digit came to rest at his own temple, and a huge, malicious smirk crept across his face.

"Right. _Up._ **_Here._** "

Shikamaru froze up for a second, his suddenly turbulent mind struggling to put the pieces together.

He opened his mouth, and instead of sound, a squirt of blood came forth. He doubled over, a shadowy figure towering above him.  
 ** _"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?"_** he heard Ino's muffled cry at his assailant from behind him. He felt nauseous, gasping for oxygen through the sputtering well of blood, and as he looked up, a hand clasped around his throat.

In an instant, his whole body jolted violently into the air, and he soared above the trees. He dazedly twisted mid-flight, just in time to see a thick beam of crackling yellow light speeding toward him from below.  
He grunted as the scorching energy ripped through his abdomen and went through to the other side, tearing a melon-sized hole that was instantly cauterised by the searing heat of the attack.

He blacked out to the sound of Choji and Ino screaming.

* * *

Kudo was crying.

But he wasn't. Not on the outside, at least.  
 _Stop it! Please,_ _ **stop!**_

He tensed his muscles as hard as he could in an effort to stop them from moving.  
His body raised his palm to the beautiful blonde girl anyway, and he found himself staring into her deep blue eyes. She had her hands raised in a complex hand-sign.  
The prongs of fire suddenly slinked away and her soothing charka entered his mind. He regained control for a brief moment before the scalding prongs stuck fast once more, successfully negating the girl's technique.

 ** _NOOOOOOOO!_**

Kudo screamed internally as a burst of visible force spewed from his open hand, knocking her back with a shockwave of air and bright yellow sparks. Her body smacked against the trunk of thick tree some distance away, producing an audible crack as her bones fractured.

He unwillingly walked over to her limp body.

"Kudo…" she muttered. "You have to… you have to fight it. I know it isn't… _you_ doing this… you have to… fight…"

Kudo's outwardly stern face twitched as he delivered an earth-shattering kick to her head, which snapped to the side, rotating far more than it should. She collapsed and rolled over, her eyes glazed and unmoving. He spun around at the speed of sound, and fired a concentrated beam of teal-tinted energy into the trees beside the path.  
A cry of agony could be heard in the distance as the fleeing Choji thudded onto the forest floor.

* * *

Naruto was already running.

He wasn't about to let Orochimaru escape… not _this_ time. Even though he hurt all over, he was alone, and probably didn't have a chance in hell of beating him, he could at least warn somebody. Tsunade was still back there… and he didn't know what had happened to Jiraiya and the Hidden Soul guy. With two of the Sannin probably out of the picture, Naruto had a pretty good idea where the third one was going. The Hidden Leaf.  
The sun was still shining in the cloudless sky, but it was going to start setting soon.

It flickered.

The sun flickered? In a cloudless sky? Naruto looked up, and sure enough, something was speeding along the horizon. It was a figure… a **human** figure… and there was only one person he knew who could pull off a flight jutsu.

 ** _"_** ** _KUDO!"_** he called to the Hidden Soul shinobi, cupping his hands around his mouth as he ran.

The figure stopped moving.  
The village was coming into view now, and he slowed down, waving at Kudo desperately. He breathed a sigh of relief as Kudo began to make his way towards him, descending gracefully through the air and landing poised on the widening road.

"Gee, Kudo, you gotta teach me how to do that one day, believe it!" Naruto said in awe. He snapped out of it. "We need to hurry. Orochimaru—"

"Is going to the leaf village?" Kudo cut in.

"Yeah… how did you know? Anyway, we need to warn everyone as soon as—"

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that, _Naruto._ " Kudo interrupted him a second time.

Naruto was puzzled. "Huh? Why?"

Kudo licked his lips slowly and spoke in an unusually silky voice.

 ** _"_** ** _Because Orochimaru wants to take them by surprise."_**

* * *

Ikidori dragged himself to his feet and attempted to regain his bearings.

He swivelled his head around. The Toad Sage was still down for the count, and the Leaf's 5th Hokage was crouched next to Orochimaru's accomplice, presumably interrogating him. Ikidori rubbed his eyes furiously, and his vision became clearer.  
Well, someone had certainly saved him a lot of trouble… it had been a very brief moment, but he could have sworn that he saw Kudo.

But if he and the Toad Sage really were saved by Kudo, and neither him nor Orochimaru were present, that must have meant that…  
Ikidori's heart sank as the worst of his fears transcended the realm of possibility into the cold, unforgiving world of reality;

 _they were all going to die._

* * *

 ** _Hey everyone!_**

 **I'm really sorry to inform you that updates will be (even) less frequent until I have finished all of my exams, because they need to take priority and I can't let myself be distracted by my own imagination :(**

 **Anyway, hope you liked this chapter!**


	18. Chapter 18 - Mind over Matter (Part 4)

**Hello!**

 **I just wanted to let you all know that my exams finish on the 24th of June, so no more updates until then I'm afraid. Please bear with me because I'm gonna pour in a lot more effort over the summer break, so expect more frequent chapters when the time comes. In the meantime, enjoy!**

* * *

Naruto blinked.

He was suddenly thrown off his feet, his legs swept out from under him by a flash of invisible force. As he fell, five powerful fingers viciously grabbed a large tuft of his golden pelt and yanked him upwards, eliciting a sharp moan of pain from behind his clenched teeth. He felt himself being hoisted upwards, until his short legs dangled helplessly above the beaten ground. He opened his eyes.  
Kudo stood there, his arm outstretched, grinning like a madman.

"Hey! What's gotten into y—"

Naruto's question was cut short by a lightning-fast fist being driven into his exposed abdomen. He writhed in agony. He was about to speak, but another stone-crushing punch ripped into his chest.  
With his blood-soaked hand, he drew a kunai from his pouch and swung it madly at his attacker, only managing to slice the air in front of his smirking expression. In a last-ditch effort, he jammed the blade upwards into Kudo's naked forearm as hard as he could.  
It stopped dead. Naruto's index finger twisted sharply as his hand continued its upwards motion. The kunai clattered on the ground. He writhed and squirmed, grappling Kudo's wrist in a futile attempt to free himself.

"What are you doing!?" Naruto spat as he struggled. "We're… on the same… side!"

"Oh, I assure you, we most certainly are _not_."

Naruto looked into Kudo's unforgiving, unmoving eyes, and felt a surge of anger rise to the surface.

"So that's how it is, huh?! After all this time, it was just a ruse? A lie?! I shoulda known better than to trust you!"

"Whether you trust me or not won't matter when I'm through with the Hidden Leaf, Uzumaki. Count on it."

"You'll regret the day you set foot in my village, you hear me!? I'm gonna—"

* * *

 _ **WHAM!**_

* * *

Kudo's autonomous arm threw the helpless child at the ground with unrelenting force.

His head smacked against the dirt. He rebounded and rolled over, his deep blue eyes rolling back into his head and his eyelids flickering as he blacked out. Kudo stooped over and lifted the unconscious boy effortlessly, slinging him violently over his shoulder. He could feel the strained rising and falling of Naruto's chest on his collar.  
Blood gargled loudly in his windpipe with every breath.

 _"_ _You hear that?_ _ **That**_ _is the sound of victory."_

The voice whispered into Kudo's unwilling ears. He felt a presence behind him, stepping out of the shadows of the trees by the path.

 _"_ _We're going to the Leaf. No more distractions. Just make sure you don't accidentally let go of the brat while you're up there. But, then again… that isn't your mistake to make,_ ** _is it?"_**

* * *

"Hey. Wake up."

Shikamaru opened his eyes.  
He drowsily focused on the crouching woman beside him. A muddle of white-gold hair, smooth, pale skin and exposed cleavage told him everything he needed to know.

"Get up, kid. We need your help."

Shikamaru saw Ino and Choji standing nearby, dusting themselves off.

"What for?"

 _"_ _Preventing the destruction of the Hidden Leaf."_

* * *

Its walls began to come into view, just above the horizon of trees.

Then, the four huge mountainside sculptures of its proud leaders.  
Soon the whole village was in his field of vision. Every shop, every home, every person, all displayed to him in magnificent detail. People talking, people laughing, people simply _existing_ alongside each other, blissfully unaware of the fate that a single, wretched man had chosen for them. A fate that Kudo found himself unable to alter.  
His free hand began to creep slowly upwards, his palm flattening against the air. He strained against it, pouring every ounce of mental effort he had into regaining control.

 _"_ _They will hate you for this, you know?  
You're stronger than me, kid. I'd be an idiot to deny it. You're probably stronger than just about anyone who's ever lived. But… you're holding something back. Maybe you've never been aware of it. You aren't who you think you are, kid. We aren't so different. Deep down, you __**love**_ _the chaos. You relish in the suffering of others. See, this has always been my way of looking at it:_

 _Why leave them to hate you…_

 _…_ _when you can have them_ _ **fear**_ _you?"_

Kudo's arm began to vibrate. A warm trickle of light gracefully seeped from his splayed fingers, converging at a singular point a few inches in front of his hand. The orb of yellowing plasma swelled up excruciatingly slowly.  
A bead of sweat leaked down his quivering brow.

* * *

Naruto breathed in sharply as he regained consciousness.

He was looking down at the densely-packed tree-tops from four hundred feet in the air.  
 _Shit.  
_ He was slung over Kudo's back. What could he do? He stayed still, not wanting to notify his attacker of his vigilant state. He couldn't attack him. That had already been proven… and rather painfully so. He had to think of something pretty fucking quickly and high-tail it out of there.  
 _Wait a sec… high-tail it?_

* * *

 _"_ _Oh, you have_ _ **no**_ _idea how long I've dreamed for this moment.  
Are you ready? If you aren't, I don't blame you… besides, you're about to murder a village full of people, right?"_

Kudo felt the radiant sphere begin to fluctuate as it grew. Arcs of crackling yellow lightning slashed apart the nearby air, and he felt the familiar sensation of something being pushed out of his very core. His breathing quickened.

This was it.

 _"_ _3… 2… 1…"_

* * *

 _ **AAARRRGGGHHH!**_

* * *

Naruto yanked the furry brown appendage with all his might.

Kudo's back arched reflexively at the sudden burst of pain.  
Naruto slid off the muscular shoulder. He began to tumble, but maintained his grip on the budding tail with one hand. The fall stopped abruptly.  
His feet swayed precariously in the wind as he dangled above the forest below. Grunting with effort, he brought his other hand up and clasped it around the dark fur, squeezing tight.

"Get off! You rotten little _… son of a—_ "

He pulled out a shuriken from his pouch and began systematically stabbing small holes in the tail from top to bottom. Kudo swatted frantically behind him, and Naruto lowered his head to avoid his flailing arms. Blood was drooling down the rope of fur, soaking the cuffs of Naruto's orange jacket.

"What are you gonna do now, kid!?"

Naruto looked up into a blinding yellow light that was mere inches from his face.

"If you don't stop squirming… you either let go, or you get _fried._ It's your choice."

Naruto's brows furrowed in determination.

"Yeah. It ** _is_** my choice."

Naruto slashed the shuriken to the side and immediately began to fall.  
The severed tail tumble down beside him, flapping violently in the rushing air. Wind whipped against his golden pelt and ruffled clothes as he approached the ground at an increasing velocity. Kudo's tail had been his only exploitable weakness thus far… and now he had just selfishly cut it off to save his own ass.

He tried to formulate a plan as the green barbed-wire canopy rushed ever closer. A Genjutsu maybe? Nah. Who was he kidding? He couldn't pull one off to save his life. The best he could do right now was to stall him. Jiraiya probably saw what happened; he'd be bringing reinforcements any minute now.  
In the meantime, though…

 _"_ _Alright, you listening to me, you stinkin' fox?!"_

 ** _"_** ** _I'm made of chakra. I don't smell of anything."_**

 _"_ _Ah… just… whatever, OK? Look, you need to lend me_ _your strength right about now. Don't ask questions, just_ _ **do**_ _it, for god's sake."_

 ** _"M_** ** _y strength?"_**

 _"_ _I said, no questions! Look, do you want us both to die or not?"_

 ** _"_** ** _No."_**

 _"_ _Then what the fuck are you waiting for!?"_

 ** _"_** ** _You know you really should watch your tongue. Keep talking down to me like that and I might decide not to help you out."_**

 _"_ _Except if you don't, then we're both going to_ _ **die.**_ _Just_ _ **think**_ _about that for a sec!"_

 ** _"_** ** _Fine, fine. I'll give you my stupid chakra, all right? Just don't blame me when I take control of your consciousness and use your body to resume my physical form someday."_**

 _"_ _Wait… what?"_

 _ **"**_ _ **Don't worry about it.  
Whatever you do, just... make it entertaining."**_

* * *

"Dammit!"

Orochimaru cursed to himself. Pain inflicted on the host temporarily weakened the control he had over it. And right now, the Hidden Soul kid was hurting, bad. He should've known that the blasted Uzumaki punk would be a nuisance. But he couldn't kill him. Not yet. Whether he liked it or not, that fiery little child had the Nine-Tailed Fox sealed inside of him. The combined strength of the tailed beasts, the otherworldly might of this inconceivably powerful teenager and his own overarching control would be nigh unstoppable.

His hands remained flat against each other as he fiddled with the strings of chakra, forcing the young shinobi to adopt a fighting stance.

 ** _KABLAM!_**

Orochimaru's eyes widened in surprise at the explosion of sound. A gust of heat and wind rushing between the winding trees caused him to stumble backwards in a hail of leaves. He looked up at columns of translucent orange chakra spewing into the air, and saw the figure of a boy soaring into the sky, cloaked in blood-red flames ... swirling, convulsing flames that formed the shape of leaping fox. The canine form fully encased the boy's body; complete with sharp claws and a lashing tail that sprouted from behind.

Ah, so _**this** _ was the power of the Nine-Tails.

* * *

 **Hope you liked that!**

 **Notice: In the near future I will be combining the small individual chapters into larger compound chapters, so don't be surprised if you find that certain chapters have been erased or edited "a la George Lucas."**

 **See you next time! And don't forget to leave a review!**


	19. Adoption Notice

- **ADOPTION NOTICE-**

Hello, readers.

As you can probably tell, I have not uploaded a chapter to any of my stories in a very, very long time. Over the past year, my last school year, I have had little to no time to write fanfiction as well as little to no motivation or inspiration.

 **As a result, I've decided to offer most of my stories up for adoption (this excludes "The Darker Side").**

The word documents for all the chapters were saved on my old computer, which I no longer have, and due to my inactivity I have lost all documents saved on 's storage system. This simply means that I will add "(Part 1)" to the title of the current story and its continuation on the adopter's account will be labelled as "(Part 2)". I will put a footnote on the last chapter of Part 1, directing new readers to the adopter's account.

 **If you wish to adopt this story, please PM me.**

I will give some general comments on where I was planning for the story to go, but these are just mere suggestions and I'd appreciate if you could explain your ideas for the story in return. It would be preferable if you have written other fanfics already so I can look at examples of your work and decide who I will pass the story on to. Once I have chosen someone to adopt the story I will delete this message.

Thank you!


End file.
